Critical thinking and misinformation vulnerability: experimental evidence from Colombia

Misinformation represents a vital threat to the societal fabric of modern economies. While skills interventions to detect misinformation such as de-bunking and prebunking, media literacy, and manipulation resilience have begun to receive increased attention, evidence on de-biasing interventions and their link with misinformation vulnerability is scarce. We explore the demand for misinformation through the lens of augmenting critical thinking in an online framed field experiment during the 2022 Presidential election in Colombia. Data from roughly 2.000 individuals suggest that providing individuals with information about their own biases (obtained through a personality test) has no impact on skepticism towards news. But (additionally) showing participants a de-biasing video seems to enhance critical thinking, causing subjects to more carefully consider the truthfulness of potential misinformation.