The effects of moral disengagement online are increasingly well documented.
Recently, its detrimental role has also emerged in the context of misinformation,
as it can lead to justifying the creation and dissemination of false news by
minimizing its effects and normalizing such behaviors in online interactions. This
issue is particularly relevant for adolescents, who are not yet fully equipped to
navigate the traps and risks of the digital world. This study aims to investigate
how a virtual prosocial agent can reduce reliance on moral disengagement in
relation to fake news and the sharing of misleading information. To achieve this,
a prosocial virtual agent was designed to enhance adolescents' awareness of
online risks and to foster the adoption of prosocial communicative strategies for
managing misinformation. In a sample of 391 adolescents (53.2% girls) with a
mean age of 13.27 years (SD = 0.69), we analyzed the effects of conversational
interaction with the prosocial agent, while controlling for initial interest in
misinformation risks and baseline levels of moral disengagement. Results from
a structural equation model show that perceiving the prosocial peer model as
agentic promotes the adoption of prosocial communicative strategies learned
during the interaction with the virtual agent. These strategies, in turn, reduce
reliance on moral disengagement toward misinformation and decrease the
likelihood of sharing misleading news. Overall, the findings suggest that
implementing a prosocial conversational virtual agent offers promising directions
for future research in counteracting moral disengagement, combating
misinformation, by fostering awareness and prosocial communicative behaviors.