John Carey, the John Wentworth Professor in Social Sciences and interim Dean of the Faculty for Arts and Sciences, was the study’s principal investigator. It’s examining how “prebunking”—which educates the public in advance about likely misinformation—shapes public perceptions of election integrity. The study, published in Science Advances, reveals that providing individuals with proactive information about election security measures significantly boosts confidence in the electoral process. These findings are particularly important as both countries head toward critical 2022 elections. Deceptive information claiming that voter fraud is prevalent has been rampant in both countries.
More than 5,500 participants from the U.S. and Brazil participated in the study. …to be surprised by the results, which they were surveyed online about their beliefs about election credibility. In the U.S., participants learned about security measures such as testing voting machines, validating mail ballots, and utilizing secure drop boxes to collect ballots. According to the survey, these interventions contributed disproportionately to increasing public trust that elections are conducted with high integrity.
Positive Outcomes from Prebunking
Findings from the U.S. portion of the study found that the prebunking treatment had a markedly positive impact on participant perceptions. Americans were more likely to agree strongly that Joe Biden had fairly won the 2020 election. At the same time, trust in the election process itself increased as well. Prebunking had the effect of preemptively lowering the number of House seats that respondents believed were won as a result of fraudulent activity in the 2020 elections. Its role in influencing public perception cannot be overstated.
Administrator John Carey went so far as to call them encouraging, saying, “These results are very encouraging. The study highlights how well-designed informational interventions can effectively counteract misinformation that has proliferated since contentious electoral outcomes in both the U.S. and Brazil.
To add to this, Brendan Nyhan, the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Government at Dartmouth, underscored the effectiveness of prebunking approaches. He said that people who were given this information became more confident voters. Their emails resulted in a lower likelihood to believe that fraud occurred.
“Prebunking is effective because it provides people with novel facts about how elections are secured,” – Brendan Nyhan
Distinct Impact Across Countries
The study’s design included distinct assessments in the US and Brazil. These four types of assessments sought to juxtapose opinion on what constitutes a credible election. Echoes of Brazil Even before the election, misinformation around election fraud exploded in Brazil, especially following the 2022 presidential elections. Prebunking strategies worked even better than credible information sources at countering this false narrative. All these strategies helped build remarkable confidence in the 2022 and 2026 elections. Along the way, they raised the alarm about the nonexistent scourge of election fraud.
We chose the two countries on purpose, as they both face similar challenges. Both are subject to misperceptions about electoral integrity that have emerged following big political events. Academics focused on these countries in order to collect useful data. That specific lens allowed them to grasp how prebunking would operate in very different political atmospheres.
Methodology and Research Findings
The study team held all of their experiments remotely, allowing them to recruit participants online through platforms like YouGov in the U.S. and Qualtrics in Brazil. The results revealed a significant effect from the prebunking intervention. It resulted in a 6% increase among Republicans who accept Joe Biden as the rightful winner of the 2020 election, raising their rates from 33% in the control group to 39%. When credible sources were available, this percentage jumped to 44%.
Carey and Nyhan’s work underscores a crucial aspect of modern electoral discourse: addressing misinformation before it takes root. Providing voters with clear, straightforward information about how elections are administered and safeguarded will help arm them against misleading misinformation campaigns. In doing so, it bolsters their confidence in democratic institutions.