Right now, Americans have some big decisions to make: deciding whether a COVID-19 booster shot is right for them, if and when to vaccinate their children, and if they should get the vaccine assuming they’ve made it this long without getting sick.
While these decisions might seem like easy ones to make for some medical professionals, the spread of misinformation often blurs the lines between “right” and “wrong” for the general public.
UNC and Duke professor Brian Southwell is an expert in communication and human behavior. He said the way people encounter and process misinformation is often overlooked.
“We tend to think about misinformation as this threat that’s out there, it’s insidious, we’re really worried about its prevalence, and certainly there are legitimate concerns in that regard,” Southwell said. “But it’s also important to keep in mind that actually all of us are vulnerable to misinformation based on what we know about the way that the brain works.”
Southwell said humans tend to take in information at face value and may lack the energy or motivation to independently fact check sources before sharing with their personal networks. This leaves the door open for the subsequent spread of “fake news” – especially on social media.
“One of the issues right now is we’ve got this flattened landscape, where if you’re looking on your phone you can find information from all over, but we aren’t necessarily thinking about where that comes from,” Southwell said. “So perhaps if we build up a bit more of a trusted relationship with a few information sources over time, that you can go back to, that can turn out to be really helpful as well.”
He said once people accept that we are all susceptible to spreading misinformation, it becomes easier to have empathy for others. This is especially important in a clinical setting, and even more so during a global pandemic.
“One of the things that we generally advise is that we need clinicians to actually pay attention to patients as people,” Southwell said. “You know they do that in lots of different dimensions, but when it comes to that piece of misinformation that they’re trying to point to, sometimes there’s some frustration there and there’s some exasperation.”
To help clinicians better communicate and partner with patients, Southwell has helped develop a workshop series titled “The Duke Program on Medical Misinformation.” This program aims to build the patient-provider relationship in a way that encourages psychologically safe conversations about all types of medical information, regardless of accuracy.
Rather than dismissing misinformation right away or immediately spouting peer-reviewed evidence, workshop curriculum teaches providers to ask questions and try to understand why the patient thinks the way they do.
“This is very different than just saying ‘oh, whatever you say is right,’” Southwell said. “It’s not accepting false information. But instead trying to focus in on what it is that that patient is trying to express in terms of their values and preferences. And then once we know that, trying to direct them towards credible information that’s really relevant to the issue that they’re raising.”
Southwell said making space for constructive conversations that allow room for someone’s personal views and beliefs is a good step towards halting further polarization in the country. He said we need more patience, tolerance, and empathy to better understand each other and gently lead people to more credible sources.
“You know, we’re all in this together,” Southwell said. “So, the more that we end up in a situation of polarization and just dismissing certain people outright, not letting them back into our family discussions or our friendship group because of some outlandish claim that they were espousing six months ago, that’s going to lead to a really difficult spot for us. So, what we’re trying to do here is leave the door open for us to come back together as a society, which I think is going to be important given the severity of the challenges that we’re facing.”
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