The Pro-Truth Pledge is an initiative promoting truth seeking and rational thinking, particularly in politics. [1] [2] [3]
I pledge My Earnest Efforts To:
Share truth
- Verify: fact-check information to confirm it is true before accepting and sharing it
- Balance: share the whole truth, even if some aspects do not support my opinion
- Cite: share my sources so that others can verify my information
- Clarify: distinguish between my opinion and the facts
Honor truth
- Acknowledge: acknowledge when others share true information, even when we disagree otherwise
- Reevaluate: reevaluate if my information is challenged, retract it if I cannot verify it
- Defend: defend others when they come under attack for sharing true information, even when we disagree otherwise
- Align: align my opinions and my actions with true information
Encourage truth
- Fix: ask people to retract information that reliable sources have disproved even if they are my allies
- Educate: compassionately inform those around me to stop using unreliable sources even if these sources support my opinion
- Defer: recognize the opinions of experts as more likely to be accurate when the facts are disputed
- Celebrate: celebrate those who retract incorrect statements and update their beliefs toward the truth
First published in December 2016, the pledge is a movement and initiative of the Rational Politics project of Intentional Insights, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting rational thinking and good decision making in various areas of life. [4] The Pro-Truth Pledge is partially a reaction (and a would-be answer) to recent political trends in the US and UK, for example to alternative facts, growth of fake news and post-truth politics; all of which are seen by pledgees as acute problems. [5] [6] [7]
The founders of Pro-Truth Pledge come from its mother organization, Intentional Insights. The behavior and social science methodologies behind the Pro-Truth Pledge were applied to the topic by Gleb Tsipursky, one of the founders of Intentional Insights. [8] [9]
According to the project's home page, as of August 26, 2018, there are 8,374 signatories to the pledge, including 85 organizations, 625 government officials, and 850 public figures [10] (including Jonathan Haidt, Michael Shermer, Steven Pinker and Pierre Whalon). [11] [12] The Pro-Truth Pledge has received media coverage. [7]
At least two peer-reviewed studies have been conducted to determine the effectiveness of taking the Pro-Truth Pledge.
A study published in the journal Behavior and Social Issues examined the sharing of news-related content on Facebook before and after taking the pledge. The findings "suggest that taking the PTP had a statistically significant effect on behavior change in favor of more truthful sharing on Facebook." [13]
Another study, published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, used a different methodology and reached a similar conclusion: "taking the pledge results in a statistically significant increase in alignment with the behaviors of the pledge." [14]
The pledge has been translated into Spanish, Hungarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Portuguese and German, but the map of the pledge takers shows that most (above 90%) of the pledge takers live in North America, mainly in the US. [15]
