Misinformation and the Sins of Memory: False-Belief Formation and Limits on Belief Revision

Correcting fake news headlines after repeated exposure: memory and belief accuracy in younger and older adults

The efficacy of fake news corrections in improving memory and belief accuracy may depend on how often adults see false information before it is corrected. Two experiments tested the competing predictions that repeating fake news before corrections will either impair or improve memory and belief accuracy. These experiments also examined whether fake news exposure effects would differ for younger and older adults due to age-related differences in the recollection of contextual details. Younger and older adults read real and fake news headlines that appeared once or thrice. Next, they identified fake news corrections among real news headlines. Later, recognition and cued recall tests assessed memory for real news, fake news, if corrections occurred, and beliefs in retrieved details. Repeating fake news increased detection and remembering of corrections, correct real news retrieval, and erroneous fake news retrieval. No age differences emerged for detection of corrections, but younger adults remembered corrections better than older adults. At test, correct fake news retrieval for earlier-detected corrections was associated with better real news retrieval. This benefit did not differ between age groups in recognition but was greater for younger than older adults in cued recall. When detected corrections were not remembered at test, repeated fake news increased memory errors. Overall, both age groups believed correctly retrieved real news more than erroneously retrieved fake news to a similar degree. These findings suggest that fake news repetition effects on subsequent memory accuracy depended on age differences in recollection-based retrieval of fake news and that it was corrected.

Intellectual humility as a tool to combat false beliefs: An individual-based approach to belief revision

False beliefs pose significant societal threats, including health risks, political polarization and even violence. In two studies (N = 884) we explored the efficacy of an individual-based approach to correcting false beliefs. We examined whether the character virtue of intellectual humility (IH)-an appreciation of one's intellectual boundaries-encourages revising one's false beliefs in response to counter-information. Our research produced encouraging but also mixed findings. Among participants who held false beliefs about the risks of vaccines (Study 1) and the 2020 US Election being rigged (Study 2), those with higher IH explored more information opposing these false beliefs. This exploration of opposing information, in turn, predicted updating away from these inaccurate health and political beliefs. IH did not directly predict updating away from false beliefs, however, suggesting that this effect-if it exists-may not be particularly powerful. Taken together, these results provide moderate support for IH as a character trait that can foster belief revision but, simultaneously, suggest that alternate pathways to combat false beliefs and misinformation may be preferred.

Memory and belief updating following complete and partial reminders of fake news

Fake news can have enduring effects on memory and beliefs. An ongoing theoretical debate has investigated whether corrections (fact-checks) should include reminders of fake news. The familiarity backfire account proposes that reminders hinder correction (increasing interference), whereas integration-based accounts argue that reminders facilitate correction (promoting memory integration). In three experiments, we examined how different types of corrections influenced memory for and belief in news headlines. In the exposure phase, participants viewed real and fake news headlines. In the correction phase, participants viewed reminders of fake news that either reiterated the false details (complete) or prompted recall of missing false details (partial); reminders were followed by fact-checked headlines correcting the false details. Both reminder types led to proactive interference in memory for corrected details, but complete reminders produced less interference than partial reminders (Experiment 1). However, when participants had fewer initial exposures to fake news and experienced a delay between exposure and correction, this effect was reversed; partial reminders led to proactive facilitation, enhancing correction (Experiment 2). This effect occurred regardless of the delay before correction (Experiment 3), suggesting that the effects of partial reminders depend on the number of prior fake news exposures. In all experiments, memory and perceived accuracy were better when fake news and corrections were recollected, implicating a critical role for integrative encoding. Overall, we show that when memories of fake news are weak or less accessible, partial reminders are more effective for correction; when memories of fake news are stronger or more accessible, complete reminders are preferable.

An ongoing secondary task can reduce the illusory truth effect

Introduction

People are more likely to believe repeated information-this is known as the Illusory Truth Effect (ITE). Recent research on the ITE has shown that semantic processing of statements plays a key role. In our day to day experience, we are often multi-tasking which can impact our ongoing processing of information around us. In three experiments, we investigate how asking participants to engage in an ongoing secondary task in the ITE paradigm influences the magnitude of the effect of repetition on belief.

Methods

Using an adapted ITE paradigm, we embedded a secondary task into each trial of the encoding and/or test phase (e.g., having participants count the number of vowels in a target word of each trivia claim) and calculated the overall accuracy on the task.

Results

We found that the overall ITE was larger when participants had no ongoing secondary task during the experiment. Further, we predicted and found that higher accuracy on the secondary task was associated with a larger ITE.

Discussion

These findings provide initial evidence that engaging in an ongoing secondary task may reduce the impact of repetition. Our findings suggest that exploring the impact of secondary tasks on the ITE is a fruitful area for further research.