Abstract
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.
Funder
National Science Foundation
Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence of the Miami Foundation
Gouvernement du Canada | Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Reset Project of Luminate
Google
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Cited by
114 articles.
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