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Abstract 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.
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All the President’s Lies: Repeated False Claims and Public Opinion
Abstract A hallmark of the Trump presidency was a stream of false statements, many of which were repeated dozens or even hundreds of times. But whether (and to what extent) this repetition translates into public misperceptions remains an open question. We address this question by leveraging the most comprehensive data on Trump’s repetition of misleading claims during his presidency. In a national survey asking Americans to evaluate the truth of claims from this database, we find a clear partisan asymmetry. An increase in the number of repetitions of a falsehood corresponded with increased belief among Republicans but decreased belief among Democrats. We also find an important moderating role of media consumption. The effects of repetition were larger when people consumed more right-leaning cable news and when falsehoods were mostly repeated on Twitter. We discuss implications of these findings for misinformation research.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2122640
- PAR ID:
- 10463272
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Public Opinion Quarterly
- Volume:
- 87
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0033-362X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 764-802
- Size(s):
- p. 764-802
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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