Making the truth stick &amp; the myths fade: Lessons from cognitive psychology

Schwarz, Norbert; Newman, Eryn J.; Leach, William D.

doi:10.1353/bsp.2016.0009

Cited by 166 publications

(152 citation statements)

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“…In line with a growing body of behavioural work, the current study demonstrated that simple retractions fail to cancel out the lasting effect of previously acquired misinformation Ecker et al, 2010;Ecker et al, 2017Gilbert et al, 1990Johnson & Seifert, 1994;Schul & Mazursky, 1990;Seifert, 2002;Wilkes & Leatherbarrow, 1988; for reviews see Lewandowsky et al, 2012;Schwarz et al, 2016). Going beyond existing work, however, the current study also investigated the neural substrates of this continued influence effect of misinformation (CIEM).…”

Section: : Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

“…Decades of behavioral research indicate that discredited information can continue to influence people's beliefs and reasoning even after that information has been retracted-a phenomenon known as the continued influence effect of misinformation (CIEM) Ecker et al, 2010;Johnson & Seifert, 1994;Wilkes & Leatherbarrow, 1988; for reviews see Lewandowsky et al, 2012;Schwarz et al, 2016). The CIEM can occur even when people (a) remember the retraction (Johnson & Seifert, 1994;Marsh et al, 2003), and/or (b) receive prior warning about their exposure to false information (Ecker et al, 2010).…”

Section: : Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One need look no further than the purported link between a common childhood vaccine and autism which has no scientific basis but is widely accepted by the public (Horne et al, 2015), or the persistent belief in the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq before the invasion of 2003 even though none were ever found (Jacobson, 2010;Kull et al, 2003). Much misinformation now spreads online, and accordingly, the World Economic Forum recently listed digital misinformation as one of the main challenges to societies globally (WEF, 2013).Decades of behavioral research indicate that discredited information can continue to influence people's beliefs and reasoning even after that information has been retracted-a phenomenon known as the continued influence effect of misinformation (CIEM) Ecker et al, 2010;Johnson & Seifert, 1994;Wilkes & Leatherbarrow, 1988; for reviews see Lewandowsky et al, 2012;Schwarz et al, 2016). The CIEM can occur even when people (a) remember the retraction (Johnson & Seifert, 1994;Marsh et al, 2003), and/or (b) receive prior warning about their exposure to false information (Ecker et al, 2010).…”

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Exploring the neural substrates of misinformation processing

et al. 2017

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Word count abstract: 168Word count manuscript (excluding references, tables, and figure captions): 5350 1: AbstractIt is well known that information that is initially thought to be correct but then revealed to be false, often continues to influence human judgement and decision making despite people being aware of the retraction. Yet little research has examined the underlying neural substrates of this phenomenon, which is known as the 'continued influence effect of misinformation' (CIEM). It remains unclear how the human brain processes critical information that retracts prior claims. To address this question in further detail, 26 healthy adults underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to brief narratives which either involved a retraction of prior information or not. Following each narrative, subjects' comprehension of the narrative, including their inclination to rely on retracted information, was probed. As expected, it was found that retracted information continued to affect participants' narrative-related reasoning. In addition, the fMRI data indicated that the continued influence of retracted information may be due to a breakdown of narrative-level integration and coherence-building mechanisms implemented by the precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus.Keywords: continued influence effect; misinformation; memory updating MISINFORMATION PROCESSING 3 2: IntroductionThe persistence of erroneous beliefs appears ubiquitous in modern societies (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). One need look no further than the purported link between a common childhood vaccine and autism which has no scientific basis but is widely accepted by the public (Horne et al., 2015), or the persistent belief in the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq before the invasion of 2003 even though none were ever found (Jacobson, 2010;Kull et al., 2003). Much misinformation now spreads online, and accordingly, the World Economic Forum recently listed digital misinformation as one of the main challenges to societies globally (WEF, 2013).Decades of behavioral research indicate that discredited information can continue to influence people's beliefs and reasoning even after that information has been retracted-a phenomenon known as the continued influence effect of misinformation (CIEM) Ecker et al., 2010;Johnson & Seifert, 1994;Wilkes & Leatherbarrow, 1988; for reviews see Lewandowsky et al., 2012;Schwarz et al., 2016). The CIEM can occur even when people (a) remember the retraction (Johnson & Seifert, 1994;Marsh et al., 2003), and/or (b) receive prior warning about their exposure to false information (Ecker et al., 2010).Attempts to retract misinformation in real world settings therefore often struggle to prove effective (Miton & Mercier, 2015;Nyhan & Reifler, 2015).Difficulties in creating effective interventions against misinformation may also partially reflect the fact that the cognitive mechanisms underlying the CIEM remain elusive. To date, two main explanations have been discussed in the literature.Acc...

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Section: : Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Section: : Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Exploring the neural substrates of misinformation processing

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“…To address common myths about male sexual assault, a training for service providers might be designed to describe and then dispel each myth; however, a growing body of evidence shows that this approach can increase the belief in myths (Schwarz, Newman, and Leach, 2016). To avoid this negative outcome, a better approach is to focus on the facts without repeating the myth.…”

Section: Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Needs of Male Sexual Assault Victims in the U.S. Armed Forces

Matthews¹,

Farris²,

Tankard³

et al. 2018

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“…Repeated exposure makes a stimulus more pleasurable (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998), and solutions presented more 'suddenly' following an anagram (50ms versus 150ms) are more likely to be judged as correct (Schwarz, Newman, & Leach, 2016). The authors argue that since suddenness, pleasure, and judged truth are dimensions of insight, then fluency is likely to be the driving force behind the experience of insight (Topolinski & Reber, 2010).…”

Section: The Feeling Of Insightmentioning

confidence: 99%

The phenomenology of truth: the psychological functions of the insight experience

Laukkonen¹

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Nearly all waking moments are accompanied by an endless stream of thoughts and ideas passing rapidly through the mind (James, 1890). Many of these mental events can feel unproductive, arbitrary, or even distracting. But once in a while, an idea appears in the stream that is immediately imbued with a sense of profound importance and value. The central thesis of my work is that this phenomenologyepiphanies, insight experiences, and Eureka moments-serve an important function in human decision-making. I propose that the feelings associated with our ideas are like lights whose brightness guide the incognisant mind in choosing to trust only the best ideas; they help us to intuitively discriminate the diamonds from the rocks, so to speak. This functional view puts insight experiences into a broader context in human cognition than before. By evaluating insight experiences from a higher level of analysis, we are able to make and test novel predictions regarding the ways that spontaneous feelings of insight guide decisions in contexts of uncertainty.The thesis is divided into two parts. In Part 1-How to elicit and detect insight moments-Chapter 1 begins by testing a model of the neuro-cognitive processes commonly believed to elicit insight experiences, known as restructuring or representational change. I then evaluate the efficacy of existing methods for detecting insight experiences in controlled experiments. In the final Chapter of Part 1, I develop and test a novel visceral and embodied measure that captures metacognitions during problem solving as well as the sudden insight experience in real-time. In Part 2-Why we have insight experiences-I begin with a theoretical discussion of insight as a heuristic in contexts of uncertainty, where I propose that people rely on insight phenomenology in order to appraise new ideas. In a subsequent empirical Chapter, I describe three experiments that broadly test and affirm the predictions made by the Eureka Heuristic model of insight. The results of these experiments show that impulsive feelings of insight-and their intensity-predict the accuracy of responses in contexts of uncertainty, in both problem solving and sensory identification tasks. In the third experiment, I show that when participants are presented with a generalknowledge 'fact'-and an insight experience is artificially elicited at the same timethen the participants are more likely to believe that the claim is true.iii

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Making the truth stick & the myths fade: Lessons from cognitive psychology

Cited by 166 publications

References 51 publications

Exploring the neural substrates of misinformation processing

Exploring the neural substrates of misinformation processing

Needs of Male Sexual Assault Victims in the U.S. Armed Forces

The phenomenology of truth: the psychological functions of the insight experience

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