Debunking health misinformation with empathy

Debunking is an effective means to mitigate the impact of health misinformation. However, even after receiving a corrective message, misinformation often persists in influencing individuals’ judgements and decision-making. I review evidence on effective components of debunking in health contexts and propose three mechanisms for how expressions of empathy might help reduce the continued influence of health misinformation. Empathetic debunkings might decrease feelings of discomfort and increase believability of debunkings by (1) decreasing perceived threat to underlying attitude roots, (2) decreasing perceived threat to face or (3) increasing perceptions of trustworthiness. Moreover, I review pitfalls of using empathetic communication that should be considered by practitioners and further investigated in research addressing empathy to tackle misinformation.