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Given the pervasiveness and dangers of misinformation, there has been a surge of research dedicated to uncovering predictors of and interventions for misinformation receptivity. One promising individual differences variable is intellectual humility (IH), which reflects a willingness to acknowledge the limitations of one’s views. Research has found that IH is correlated with less belief in misinformation, greater intentions to engage in evidence-based behaviors (e.g., receive vaccinations), and more actual engagement in evidence-based behaviors (e.g., take COVID-19 precautions). We sought to synthesize this growing area of research in a multi-level meta-analytic review (k = 27, S = 54, ES = 469, N = 33,814) to provide an accurate estimate of the relations between IH and misinformation receptivity and clarify potential sources of heterogeneity. We found that IH was related to less misinformation receptivity for beliefs (r = -.15, 95% CI [-.19, -.12]) and greater intentions to move away from misinformation (r = .13, 95% CI [.06, .19]) and behaviors that move people away from misinformation (r = .30, 95% CI [.24, .36]). Effect sizes were generally small, and moderator analyses revealed that effects were stronger for comprehensive (as opposed to narrow) measures of IH. These findings suggest that IH is one path for understanding resilience against misinformation, and we leverage our results to highlight pressing areas for future research focused on boundary conditions, risk factors, and causal implications. 

Fact-checkers want people to both read and remember their misinformation debunks. Retrieval practice is one way to increase memory, thus multiple-choice quizzes may be a useful tool for fact-checkers. We tested whether exposure to quizzes improved people’s accuracy ratings for fact-checked claims and their memory for specific information within a fact check. Across three experiments, 1551 US-based online participants viewed fact checks (either health- or politics-related) with or without a quiz. Overall, the fact checks were effective, and participants were more accurate in rating the claims after exposure. In addition, quizzes improved participants’ memory for the details of the fact checks, even 1 week later. However, that increased memory did not lead to more accurate beliefs. Participants’ accuracy ratings were similar in the quiz and no-quiz conditions. Multiple-choice quizzes can be a useful tool for increasing memory, but there is a disconnect between memory and belief. 

Background: A rapidly growing body of research demonstrates that conspiratorial ideation is related to less accuracy, more overconfidence, and more reliance on intuition. Yet, the bulk of this research has focused on belief in conspiracy theories rather than conspiracy theorists. As such it remains unclear whether all conspiracy theorists are equally inaccurate, overconfident, and reliant on intuition or whether there are types of conspiracy theorists who differ across these variables. Methods: To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a preregistered secondary data analysis of the variable-level and person-centered relations among conspiratorial ideation, accuracy, overconfidence, and motivations across five samples (Nsranged from 477 to 3,056). We used multiple measures of each variable to build in conceptual replication. Results: Broadly, the variable-centered results were consistent with existing research and revealed that conspiratorial ideation tended to be related to less accuracy, more overconfidence, more reliance on intuition and closemindedness, and less rational thinking and open-mindedness. In person-centered analyses, we found two classes of individuals, one who scored higher on conspiratorial ideation and one who scored lower. In the conspiracy theorist class, we found that conspiracy theorists were not unknowledgeable and irrational across the board. Conclusions: Thus, conspiracy theorists may be more psychologically complex than originally presumed based on variable-level results. Future research is needed to examine how different motives manifest in conspiracy theorists and to leverage insights from such research to reduce susceptibility to misinformation. 

When news about moral transgressions goes viral on social media, the same person may repeatedly encounter identical reports about a wrongdoing. In a longitudinal experiment ( N = 607 U.S. adults from Mechanical Turk), we found that these repeated encounters can affect moral judgments. As participants went about their lives, we text-messaged them news headlines describing corporate wrongdoings (e.g., a cosmetics company harming animals). After 15 days, they rated these wrongdoings as less unethical than new wrongdoings. Extending prior laboratory research, these findings reveal that repetition can have a lasting effect on moral judgments in naturalistic settings, that affect plays a key role, and that increasing the number of repetitions generally makes moral judgments more lenient. Repetition also made fictitious descriptions of wrongdoing seem truer, connecting this moral-repetition effect with past work on the illusory-truth effect. The more times we hear about a wrongdoing, the more we may believe it—but the less we may care.