Fallibility Salience Increases Intellectual Humility: Implications for People’s Willingness to Investigate Political Misinformation

The spread of online political misinformation has ramifications for political polarization, trust in political systems, and the functioning of democracy. In this article, we advance findings on investigative behaviors—actions aimed at determining the veracity of information encountered online—in response to political misinformation. Across three preregistered studies (N = 889), we find that investigative behaviors increase accuracy discernment of political misinformation (Study 1), that intellectual humility reliably predicts investigative behaviors in this context (Study 2), and test a novel fallibility salience manipulation to increase intellectual humility (Study 3). We discuss the implications of these findings for reducing the impacts of political misinformation.