I’m the director of the Psychology of Misinformation Lab at Northeastern University. My research investigates what drives belief in inaccurate information, why certain individuals are predisposed to refrain from belief change even in the face of good corrective evidence, and how corrections can be designed to maximize impact. I’m currently funded by a NIH Pathway to Independence Award from the National Cancer Institute.

Journal articles

Swire-Thompson, B., Dobbs, M., Thomas, A. K., & DeGutis, J. (2023). Memory failure predicts belief regression after the correction of misinformation. Cognition. pdf

Prike, T., Blackley, P., Swire-Thompson, B., & Ecker, U. K. (2023). Examining the replicability of backfire effects after standalone corrections. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 8(1), 39.

Peterson, J., Wilson, T. F., Watt, M. H., Gruhl, J., Davis, S., Olsen, J., Parsons, M., Kann B.H., Swire-Thompson, B., Fagerlin, A., Warner, E.L., King, A.J., Chino, F., & Johnson, S. B. (2023). International medical tourism of US cancer patients for alternative cancer treatments: Financial, demographic, and clinical profiles of online crowdfunding campaigns. Cancer Medicine, 12(7), 8871-8879.

Prike, T., Reason, R., Ecker, U. K., Swire-Thompson, B., & Lewandowsky, S. (2023). Would I lie to you? Party affiliation is more important than Brexit in processing political misinformation. Royal Society Open Science, 10(2), 220508.

Beauchamp, N., Shugars, S., Swire-Thompson, B., & Lazer, D. (2023). How expertise mediates the effects of numerical and textual communication on individual and collective accuracy. Decision.

Prike, T., Blackley, P., Swire-Thompson, B., & Ecker, U. K. (2023). It Was Not Drugs! No Evidence for Corrections Backfiring When Presented Without Initial Misinformation Exposure.

Swire-Thompson, B., Miklaucic, N., Wihbey, J., Lazer, D., & DeGutis, J. (2022). Backfire effects after correcting misinformation are strongly associated with reliability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. pdf  

Swire-Thompson, B. & Lazer, D. (2022). Reducing Health Misinformation in Science: A Call to Arms. The ANNALS of the American Academy. pdf

Sanderson, J. A., Bowden, V., Swire-Thompson, B. Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U.K.H.  (2022). Listening to misinformation while driving: Cognitive load and the effectiveness of (repeated) corrections. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.

Morrow, G., Swire-Thompson, B., Polny, J., Kopec, M., & Wihbey, J. (2021) The emerging science of content labeling: Contextualizing social media content moderation. The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology

Swire-Thompson, B., Cook, J., Butler, L., Sanderson, J., Lewandowsky, S, & Ecker, U.K.H. (2021). Correction format has a limited role when debunking misinformation. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. pdf

Johnson, S. B., Parsons M., Dorff, T., Moran, M.S. Ward, J.H., Cohen, S.A., Akerley, W., Bauman, J., Hubbard, J., Spratt, D.E., Bylund, C.L., Swire-Thompson, B., Onega, T., Scherer, L.D., Tward, J., Fagerlin A. (2021). Cancer Misinformation and Harmful Information on Facebook and Other Social Media: A Brief Report. JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Swire-Thompson, B. DeGutis, J., & Lazer, D. (2020). Searching for the backfire effect: Measurement and design considerations. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 9(3), 286-299. pdf

Swire-Thompson, B. & Lazer, D. (2020). Public health and online misinformation—Challenges and recommendations. Annual Review of Public Health. pdf

Pasquetto, I., Swire-Thompson, B., Amazeen, M.A., Benevenuto, F., Brashier, N.M., Bond, R.M., Bozarth, L.C., Budak, C., Ecker, U.K.H. , Fazio, L.K., Ferrara, E., Flanagin, A.J., Flammini, A., Freelon, D., Grinberg, N., Hertwig, R., Jamieson,K.H., Joseph, K., Jones, J.J. …Yang, K.C. (2020). Tackling misinformation: What researchers could do with social media data. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review, 1(8) pdf

Peterson, J.S., Swire-Thompson, B. & Johnson, S.B. (2020). What’s the alternative? Responding strategically to cancer misinformation, Future Oncology.

Swire-Thompson, B., Ecker, U.K.H., Swire, B., Lewandowsky, S., & Berinsky, A. J. (2020). They might be a liar but they’re my liar: Source evaluation and the prevalence of misinformation. Political Psychology. pdf

Grinberg, N., Joseph, K., Friedland, L., Swire-Thompson, B. , & Lazer, D. (2019). Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election. Science, 363(6425), 374-378.

Aird, M. J., Ecker, U. K., Swire, B., Berinsky, A. J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2018). Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample. Royal Society Open Science, 5(12), 180593. pdf

Swire, B., Ecker, U. K. H. & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). The role of familiarity in correcting inaccurate information, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. pdf

Swire, B., Berinsky, A., J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2017). Processing political misinformation—Comprehending the Trump phenomenon, Royal Society Open Science. pdf

Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Swire, B., & Chang, D. (2011). Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 18, 570-578. pdf

Conference papers

Joseph, K., Swire-Thompson, B., Baum, M., & Lazer D. (2019). Polarized, together: Comparing partisan support for Trump’s tweets using survey and platform-based measures. International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. pdf

Book chapters

Swire, B. & Ecker, U. K. H. (2018). Misinformation and its correction: Cognitive mechanisms and recommendations for mass communication. In. B. Southwell, E. A. Thorson, & L. Sheble. (Eds), Misinformation and Mass Audiences. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. pdf

Ecker, U. K. H., Swire, B., & Lewandowsky, S. (2014). Correcting misinformation—A challenge for education and cognitive science. In D. N. Rapp & J. Braasch. (Eds.), Processing Inaccurate Information: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives from Cognitive Science and the Educational Sciences. (pp. 13-38). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pdf

Research handbooks

Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Ecker, U. K. H., Albarracín, D., Amazeen, M. A., Kendeou, P., Lombardi, D., Newman, E. J., Pennycook, G., Porter, E. Rand, D. G., Rapp, D. N., Reifler, J., Roozenbeek, J., Schmid, P., Seifert, C. M., Sinatra, G. M., Swire-Thompson, B., van der Linden, S., Vraga, E. K., Wood, T. J., Zaragoza, M. S. (2020). The Debunking Handbook 2020. DOI:10.17910/b7.1182 pdf

PhD Thesis

Swire-Thompson, B. (2017). The role of memory and ideological biases in the correction of misinformation. University of Western Australia. pdf