Positive and Negative Effects of Monitoring Popular Films for Historical Inaccuracies

Abstract

History educators often use popular films in the classroom to teach critical thinking through an exercise that involves identifying historical inaccuracies in the films. We investigated how this exercise affects the acquisition of true and false historical knowledge. In two experiments, subjects studied texts about historical topics and watched clips from corresponding films. Each film contained one piece of information that contradicted the text (i.e. misinformation). Some subjects received instructions to monitor for inaccuracies in the films. After a delay, they were tested on the texts. Monitoring instructions did not reduce subjects' acquisition of misinformation, and even when subjects successfully detected the inaccuracies, they sometimes still reproduced the misinformation. However, when they received feedback about the inaccuracies, the production of misinformation was substantially reduced. Overall, these findings indicate that educators should provide feedback when using popular films for this critical thinking exercise so that students do not acquire false knowledge.

Does Validation During Language Comprehension Depend on an Evaluative Mindset?

“…For example, it may be affected by the text genre (narrative vs. expository texts) or by the perceived credibility of a text source (encoding under distrust; e.g., Schul, Mayo, & Burnstein, 2004). For 22 ISBERNER AND RICHTER example, people seem to be particularly susceptible to false information and persuasion when reading or viewing narratives (e.g., Appel & Richter, 2007;Gerrig & Prentice, 1991;Green & Brock, 2000;Umanath, Butler, & Marsh, 2012), which suggests that epistemic monitoring might be suppressed to some extent in narrative (as opposed to argumentative) texts. Future research should focus more explicitly on the conditions under which validation succeeds or fails, with the goal of reconciling evidence for readers' apparent susceptibility to false information with the abundant evidence for routine validation in language comprehension.…”

Reader, interrupted: Do disruptions during encoding influence the use of inaccurate information?

“…But such work has nevertheless been informative. Empirical demonstrations have shown that individuals will rely on briefly presented inaccuracies to problematically complete summarization (e.g., Johnson & Seifert, ), judgment (e.g., Gerrig & Prentice, ; Appel & Richter, ; Rapp et al, ), recall (e.g., Andrews & Rapp, ; Butler, Zaromb, Lyle, & Roediger III, ; Ecker et al, ; Umanath, Butler, & Marsh, ), and questionnaire tasks (e.g., Marsh, ; Marsh et al, ; Marsh & Fazio, ). Overcoming these effects has not been trivial and has motivated thinking towards more mechanistic accounts.…”

Fool Me Twice: The Consequences of Reading (and Rereading) Inaccurate Information

“…For example, while reading about the Titanic , readers could be tasked with actively retrieving relevant memories about the historic event, which would presumably include information about how the Titanic fell victim to the iceberg collision. These tasks might not necessarily prove successful at changing moment‐by‐moment evaluative processes (see Rapp, ; Sparks & Rapp, ; Umanath et al, for discussions) but could support any subsequent considerations of the information for post‐reading tasks. Recent work from our own lab, for example, has shown that asking participants to carefully proofread text content can reduce their subsequent reliance on inaccurate text information (Rapp, Hinze, Kohlhepp, & Ryskin, ).…”

“…In fact, everyday texts are potentially even more problematic than traditional lab‐based materials. Projects examining readers' reliance on inaccurate information have utilized stories that include incorrect facts without strong supportive contexts (but see Prentice, Gerrig, & Bailis, ; Umanath, Butler, & Marsh, ), unlike the extended, supportive contexts that can appear in everyday texts. Historical non‐fiction, for instance, is replete with cases in which authors set up circumstances that call into question well‐known facts, in the service of motivating interest in reading about familiar events.…”