From belief weakening to belief revision: overcoming entrenched health misperceptions among older adults

Purpose This study examines the challenge of correcting entrenched health misperceptions among older adults. Given that conventional fact-checking often fails to correct health misperceptions in older adults, we test whether alternative interventions including counterspeech and awareness training can better promote belief correction. Design/methodology/approach Two randomized controlled trials were conducted via the Tencent Questionnaire platform. Experiment 1 evaluated a conventional fact-checking intervention, while Experiment 2 focused on a screened belief-perseverant subgroup with high belief perseverance, comparing counterspeech and awareness training against repeated fact-checking. Findings Conventional fact-checking corrected only a small portion of pre-existing health misperceptions in our sample, with about 11% of participants explicitly rejecting the false health claim. Among those whose misperceptions persisted after initial exposure, counterspeech yielded a substantially higher short-term correction rate (46.15%) than repeated fact-checking, whereas awareness training showed a higher, though non-significant, short-term correction rate (36.84%). Originality/value Moving beyond conventional metrics of belief reduction, this study advances health misperception research by evaluating discrete state transitions from non-rejection (endorsement or neutrality) to explicit rejection. Furthermore, it demonstrates that for belief-perseverant older adults, alternative strategies like counterspeech and awareness training outperform repeated fact-checking, providing a more effective framework for follow-up interventions.