Why does our psychology make misinformation so difficult to correct? First Draft explains key concepts in the second part of a three-part series.
The psychology of misinformation – the mental shortcuts, confusions, and illusions that encourage us to believe things that aren’t true – can tell us a lot about how to prevent its harmful effects.
In the second part of this series on the psychology of misinformation, we cover psychological concepts that are important for corrections, such as fact-checking and debunking. A key theme that resurfaces is the central problem with correction: Once we are exposed to misinformation, it is very difficult to get it out of our heads.
This is the second in our series on the psychology of misinformation. Read the first "The Psychology of Misinformation: Why We Are Vulnerable? " and the third "The Psychology of Misinformation: How Do We Prevent It?
The continuing effect of the impact
Persistent influence is when misinformation continues to affect people even after it has been corrected. In short, it is the failure of corrections.
Sometimes called the “echo of belief,” this is the most important psychological concept to understand when it comes to corrections. There is a consensus that once you have been exposed to misinformation, it is very, very difficult to unlearn it from your brain.
Corrections often fail because misinformation, even when explained in the context of a debunking, can later be remembered as fact. If we return to dual-process theory, faster, more automatic thinking can mean that we remember the information but forget that it was corrected. For example, if you read a debunking of a fake news story about a politician falsely appearing drunk in a doctored video, you may later simply recall the idea that the politician was drunk, forgetting the denial.
Even effective corrections, such as those with lots of detail that affirm facts rather than repeat misinformation, can be forgotten after just a week. In the words of Ullrich Ecker, a cognitive scientist at the University of Western Australia, “the persistent effect of influence seems to defy most efforts to eliminate it.”
Most importantly, it means that when it comes to misinformation, prevention is preferable to cure.
Mental models
A mental model is a framework for understanding something that happened. If your house is burning and you see a broken Molotov cocktail, you might build a mental model that the fire was caused by an attack. If a firefighter corrects you, saying it wasn’t caused by the Molotov cocktail in front of you, you’ll have a gap in your mental model—specifically, what caused the fire.
This means that corrections must also fill the gap they create, such as with an alternative causal explanation. However, this is tricky: Replacing a mental model is not always possible with the available information.
The implied truth effect
The implied truth effect is when something seems true because it has not been corrected.
This is a big problem for platforms. When corrections, such as fact checks, are applied to some posts but not all, it implies that unlabeled posts are true.
Gordon Pennycook and colleagues recently presented evidence that the implicit truth effect exists when misinformation is labeled in some social media posts but not in others.
The dirty truth effect
The tainted truth effect is when corrections cause people to start doubting otherwise truthful information. The danger is that corrections and warnings create a generalized distrust of what people read from sources such as the media.
As with the implied truth effect, the tainted truth effect (also known as the “spillover effect”) is a potential problem with labeling misinformation on social media: It can make people start to doubt everything they see online.
REPEATING
Repetition causes misinformation to get into people's minds and makes it much more difficult to correct.
There are several reasons for this. First, if you hear a statement more than once, you are more likely to believe it to be true. Repetition can also make a belief seem more widespread than it is, which can increase its credibility, leading people to the false conclusion that if many people think it is true, it is more likely to be true.
The illusory effect of truth
The illusory truth effect occurs when familiarity makes something seem real when it isn't.
This can happen with fake news headlines even with a single exposure. Exposure can even increase the credibility of headlines that contradict people's views of the world.