resilience
Definition
Resilience refers to the capacity of individuals and groups to resist, counter, or recover from the influence of misinformation and conspiracy beliefs through psychological and cognitive means. Research in this area treats resilience not as a fixed trait but as something that can be cultivated, with interventions such as inoculation against pro-Russian disinformation and emotion-fallacy inoculation demonstrating measurable improvements in participants' ability to recognize misleading content and discount its credibility. Intellectual humility, particularly when assessed across metacognitive, relational, and emotional dimensions, is associated with reduced misinformation receptivity and greater engagement in evidence-based behaviors, pointing to individual-difference variables as one pathway to building resistance. Scaling resilience beyond the individual requires attention to structural factors including crowd size, trust in fact-checking sources, and the degree of cognitive dissonance generated by corrective feedback.
Sources: Kunst (2024)
Related Terms
- misinformation (1 shared article)
- disinformation (1 shared article)
- interventions (1 shared article)
- fake news (1 shared article)
- conspiracy theories (1 shared article)
Applications
Resilience and Inoculation
Inoculation interventions, which warn individuals about persuasive attempts and preemptively refute misleading arguments, are presented as a direct mechanism for building resilience against misinformation. Experimental work found that inoculation improved recognition of pro-Russian disinformation and reduced its perceived credibility, and that these effects held even among participants with a Russian migration background who showed elevated baseline susceptibility. A separate study on emotion-fallacy inoculation found that the intervention reduced the perceived reliability of emotionally misleading news and improved veracity discernment, even when persuasive social cues were present.
Sources: Kunst (2024)
Resilience and Intellectual Humility
Intellectual humility, particularly comprehensive measures that capture metacognitive, relational, and emotional features, is associated with lower misinformation receptivity and greater intention to move away from false beliefs. Effects were strongest for pseudoscience domains including anti-vaccination attitudes and COVID-19 beliefs, suggesting that the relationship between intellectual humility and resilience is moderated by the type of misinformation encountered.
Sources: Kunst (2024)
Resilience and Misinformation Susceptibility
Susceptibility and resilience are treated as opposing ends of the same continuum, with the special issue framing its work explicitly as movement from vulnerability to vigilance. Factors such as Russian identity and exposure to Russian media increased susceptibility to pro-Russian disinformation, while psychological interventions shifted participants toward greater resistance, illustrating that susceptibility is not fixed and that resilience can be operationalized as a reduction in measurable vulnerability.
Sources: Kunst (2024)
