Misinformation about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a pressing societal challenge. Across two studies, one preregistered (n₁ = 1771 and n₂ = 1777), we assess the efficacy of two ‘prebunking’ interventions aimed at improving people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques commonly used in COVID-19 misinformation across three different languages (English, French and German). We find that Go Viral!, a novel five-minute browser game, (a) increases the perceived manipulativeness of misinformation about COVID-19, (b) improves people’s attitudinal certainty (confidence) in their ability to spot misinformation and (c) reduces self-reported willingness to share misinformation with others. The first two effects remain significant for at least one week after gameplay. We also find that reading real-world infographics from UNESCO improves people’s ability and confidence in spotting COVID-19 misinformation (albeit with descriptively smaller effect sizes than the game). Limitations and implications for fake news interventions are discussed.

有关新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）的错误信息是一个紧迫的社会挑战。在两项研究中，一项进行了预先注册（n ₁  = 1771和n ₂  = 1777），我们评估了两种旨在提高人们发现三种不同语言在COVID-19错误信息中常用的操纵技术的能力的``预冲动''干预措施的功效（英语，法文和德文）。我们发现病毒式传播！，一款新颖的五分钟浏览器游戏，（a）增强了对COVID-19的错误信息的感知操纵性，（b）提高了人们发现错误信息的态度确定性（信心），并且（c）降低了自我报告的分享意愿与他人的错误信息。在玩游戏后至少一个星期，前两个效果仍然很重要。我们还发现，从联合国教科文组织（UNESCO）读取现实世界的信息图表可以提高人们发现COVID-19错误信息的能力和信心（尽管其影响大小要比游戏中描述的要小）。讨论了假新闻干预措施的局限性和含义。