Do false allegations persist? Retracted misinformation does not continue to influence explicit person impressions.

Abstract

Corrected misinformation often continues to influence reasoning; this is known as the continued-influence effect (CIE). It is unclear whether this effect also occurs in impression formation, with some arguing that person impressions are readily updated. The present study tested if a retracted allegation influences person impressions. Participants received examples of behaviors that a fictitious person had allegedly engaged in. The set did or did not include a domestic-violence behavior, which subsequently was or was not retracted. Discredited misinformation was found to influence neither trait ratings of the person nor behavior predictions. This held even when the person's name implied a cultural background stereotypically associated with domestic violence. This provides evidence that under some circumstances, people can fully discount discredited misinformation when building person impressions. However, there was some tentative evidence that corrected misinformation did influence a more indirect measure, namely ratings of the fictitious person's face.

The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction

“…For example, misinformation damaging the reputation of a political candidate might spark outrage or contempt, which might promote continued influence of this misinformation (in particular among non-supporters) 134 . However, there seems to be little continued influence of negative misinformation on impression formation when the person subjected to the false allegation is not a disliked politician, perhaps because reliance on corrected misinformation might be seen as biased or judgemental (that is, it might be frowned upon to judge another person even though allegations have been proven false) 136 .…”

The role of discomfort in the continued influence effect of misinformation

“…In cases where causes are unclear, such as conditions like autism, changing how people interpret discomfort might make them more accepting of retractions that refute misinformation about the causes of that condition. However, in cases where misinformation does not provide causal understanding, such as defamatory information about a person where continued influence effects can be less pronounced (Ecker & Rodricks, 2020), discomfort might play less of a role and discomfortfocused interventions might have less of an effect.…”

Can You Believe it? An Investigation into the Impact of Retraction Source Credibility on the Continued Influence Effect

“…Results typically show that a direct retraction significantly reduces reliance on the critical information relative to the no-retraction control condition, but does not eliminate the influence down to the no-misinformation baseline (e.g., Ecker, Hogan, & Lewandowsky, 2017;Ecker, Lewandowsky, & Apai, 2011). Continued influence has also been demonstrated with real-world news (Lewandowsky, Stritzke, Oberauer, & Morales, 2005), common myths (Ferrero, Hardwicke, Konstantinidis, & Vadillo, 2020;Sinclair, Stanley, & Seli, 2019;Swire, Ecker, & Lewandowsky, 2017), political misconceptions (Ecker & Ang, 2019; also see Nyhan & Reifler, 2010;Wood & Porter, 2019), with subtle and implicit misinformation (Ecker, Lewandowsky, Chang, & Pillai, 2014;Rich & Zaragoza, 2016), false allegations (Thorson, 2016; but see Ecker & Rodricks, 2020), and when the misinformation is presented initially as a negation that is later reinstated .…”