Timing matters when correcting fake news
Name
e2020043118.full.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
706.42 KB
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Checksum (MD5)
a669e697f0f58feac8209229dce5b833
Author(s)
Brashier, Nadia M.
Pennycook, Gordon
Berinsky, Adam
Rand, David Gertler
Date Issued
January 2021
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Brashier, Nadia M., Pennycook, Gordon, Berinsky, Adam and Rand, David Gertler. 2021. "Timing matters when correcting fake news." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118 (5).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2021 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Countering misinformation can reduce belief in the moment, but corrective messages quickly fade from memory. We tested whether the longer-term impact of fact-checks depends on when people receive them. In two experiments (total N = 2,683), participants read true and false headlines taken from social media. In the treatment conditions, “true” and “false” tags appeared before, during, or after participants read each headline. Participants in a control condition received no information about veracity. One week later, participants in all conditions rated the same headlines’ accuracy. Providing fact-checks after headlines (debunking) improved subsequent truth discernment more than providing the same information during (labeling) or before (prebunking) exposure. This finding informs the cognitive science of belief revision and has practical implications for social media platform designers.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020043118
