Solving Fake News and Other Misinformation: The Pro-Truth Pledge
We have witnessed an alarming deterioration of truth in the US public sphere, especially in the political arena. This paper describes a proposed intervention, the Pro-Truth Pledge, which combines behavioral science with crowd-sourcing to help address this problem. The pledge asks signees – private citizens and public figures – to commit to 12 behaviors that research in behavioral science shows correlate with an orientation toward truthfulness. Pledge mechanisms like this one have been shown in other contexts to lead private citizens to engage in more pro-social behavior. For public figures, the pledge offers specific incentives to stick to the pledge, with rewards in the form of positive reputation for honesty and truth-telling, and accountability through evaluation and potential punishment for deception.