Does Mud Always Stick? No Evidence for the Continued Influence of Misinformation on Person Impressions

Abstract

Despite robust evidence that misinformation continues to influence event-related reasoning after a clear retraction, evidence for the continued influence of misinformation on person impressions is mixed. Across three experiments, we investigated the impact of person-related misinformation and its correction on dynamic (moment-to-moment) impression formation. Participants iteratively formed an impression of a protagonist, “John”, based on a series of behaviour descriptions, including misinformation that was later retracted. Person impressions were recorded after each behaviour description. As predicted, we found a strong effect of information valence on person impressions: negative misinformation had a greater impact on person impressions than positive misinformation (Experiments 1 and 2). Furthermore, in each experiment participants fully discounted the misinformation once retracted, regardless of whether the misinformation was positive or negative. This was true even when the other behaviour descriptions were congruent with (Experiment 2) or causally related to (Experiment 3) the retracted misinformation. Thus, we found no evidence for the continued influence of retracted misinformation on person impressions. Our findings help to address some of the discrepant findings in the literature, suggesting that following a clear retraction, person-related misinformation can be effectively discounted, at least for the scenarios considered in this study.