"Sacred Value Messengers": Testing Partisan-Aligned Fact-Checkers for High-Risk Groups

Pretus et al. (2023) show far-right partisans are "unresponsive to fact-checking" due to identity fusion and sacred values. Habib et al. (2024) reveal that trust in fact-checkers is politically polarized. This idea proposes a novel solution: sacred value messengers—partisan-aligned figures who debunk misinformation while affirming group identity. For example, testing if a trusted Republican figure fact-checking immigration misinformation reduces sharing among Trump supporters, compared to neutral sources. Unlike Oeldorf-Hirsch et al. (2023), who find labels ineffective, this approach reframes fact-checking as in-group identity repair. We’d measure neural responses (fMRI) to see if sacred-value-aligned messengers reduce the mentalizing activity observed in Pretus et al.’s study, offering a mechanistic account of why identity-based interventions work where cognitive nudges fail.

References:

1. The Influence of Fact-Checking Is Disputed! The Role of Party Identification in Processing and Sharing Fact-Checked Social Media Posts. Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, Mike Schmierbach, A. Appelman, Michael P. Boyle (2023). American Behavioral Scientist.
2. The role of political devotion in sharing partisan misinformation and resistance to fact-checking.. C. Pretus, Camila Servin-Barthet, Elizabeth Harris, W. Brady, Ó. Vilarroya, J. V. Van Bavel (2023). Journal of experimental psychology. General.
3. "I don't trust them": Exploring Perceptions of Fact-checking Entities for Flagging Online Misinformation. Hana Habib, Sara Elsharawy, Rifat Rahman (2024). arXiv.org.