The Suspicious Caregiver: Caregiving Decreases Perceived Truthfulness and Sharing of Persuasive Communications

This research seeks to investigate the impact of an active caregiving motivation on the perceived truthfulness of persuasive communications.  Building on prior work, we are keen to investigate whether inducing caregiving motivation may serve as a useful intervention to reduce individuals’ propensity to share misinformation. Given that caregivers are often considered a primary and trustworthy source of information for vulnerable members of society, it is of crucial importance that we understand how an active caregiving motivation influences the sharing of relevant and truthful information while preventing the dissemination of false information––especially in an era of misinformation and conspiracy theories.