Misinformation and Its Correction

Title: Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing

Publication Date: 2012

Authors: Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Colleen M. Seifert, Norbert Schwarz, & John Cook

Links: Full Paper

Overview of psychological research about why we believe misinformation and how to correct it.

• Humans are driven by a desire to avoid cognitive dissonance because it causes negative feelings. We may use fluency (metacognitive experience of thinking) as a heuristic for veracity of information.
• We are more likely to accept information that is consistent with our worldview. And retractions do not work equally well for people whose worldviews are consistent vs inconsistent with the original story.
• Studies show that information presented in a familiar accent is processed more fluently than non-familiar accent.
• Retractions frequently fail to correct misinformation. There are a few reasons for this:
  • mental models - As we learn information, we build a mental model of causality. If you remove one of the pieces of information by retracting it as ‘false’, you leave a gap in that mental model. Humans are more likely to fill such gaps with inaccurate congruent information than to leave them empty. Therefore, it is important to provide alternative narratives that are a) plausible, b) account for the causal qualities in the initial story, and c) explain why the misinformation was offered, preferably the motivations behind it.
  • retrieval failure - we tend to remember the details but not the source
  • we don't like to be told what to do, and may react negatively to authoritative retractions, especially if we aren't explained why we got the earlier misinformation
• Most effective debiasing messages are tailored to a specific audience by ensuring that the info/correction is consistent with their worldview.