Listening to misinformation while driving: Cognitive load and the effectiveness of (repeated) corrections.

AUTHORS: Jasmyne A Sanderson, Vanessa Bowden, Briony Swire-Thompson, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich K. H Ecker

Misinformation can continue to influence an individual’s reasoning even after a correction. Research suggests that such influence is partially driven by misinformation familiarity, and that corrections should therefore avoid repeating misinformation to avoid strengthening of misconceptions. In this article, the author tested whether familiarity backfire occur if corrections are processed under cognitive load. In this study, participants listened to repeated misinformation corrections in a driving stimulator. The findings showed that multiple corrections were more effective than a single correction, and that cognitive load reduced correction effectiveness. As a result, these findings provides further evidence against familiarity backfire effects and has implications for real-world debunking.

How susceptible are you? Using feedback and monitoring to reduce the influence of false information

AUTHORS: Nikita A Salovich, David N Rapp

Reading false information, even when it is obviously incorrect, can have problematic effects on what people remember and report to be true. Prior research has demonstrated that evaluative tasks enhance the utilisation of accurate prior knowledge over presented inaccuracies; however, these tasks often rely on explicit instructions to establish an evaluative mindset. In this article, the authors explored the potential impact of confronting individuals about their susceptibility to false information on their motivation to evaluate and reduce reproductions of inaccurate ideas. In Experiment 1, participants receiving performance feedback on susceptibility to misinformation reproduced fewer incorrect ideas and provided more correct answers than those without feedback. In Experiment 2, similar benefits were observed when participants were informed of monitoring their use of false information.

Dishonesty in public reports of confidence: Metacognitive monitoring of memory conformity.

AUTHORS: Dicle Çapan, Terry Eskenazi Sami Gülgöz

Although memory is constantly monitored and controlled by the metacognitive system, little is known about how people monitor memory conformity, incorporating information in others’ memories into one’s memory of a specific event. In this article, the authors tested participants’ memory for shared events and asked them to report their confidence, individually and jointly. Relationships between specific individual characteristics, memory and confidence variables were explored. The findings showed that participants were privately more confident in memory decisions when they did not conform to their cowitness, and that participants were publicly more confident when they conformed to an incorrect than a correct answer. These findings imply that the metacognitive system monitors the social influences of memory, as well as tracks the reliability of the information presented by another.

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