Misinformation and threats to self-interest

Is misinformation influential when the false information it conveys directly threatens one’s self-interest? We adopted a vignette experiment and relied on disinformation circulated during the 2019 pension reform in Brazil to show how large and tangible material threats to certain segments of society affect support for said reform. Our vignette experiment indicated how current policies could be affected if pension reform failed, threatening the interest of beneficiaries of said policies. Our findings show that threats to self-interest lowered support for the reform among the groups targeted by the misinformation, suggesting a “backfire” effect. These findings are important because they help understand the scoping conditions for “backfire” effects. They also suggest that disinformation campaigns that target the self-interest of specific groups might exert the opposite effect than the one originally intended.