SaTC: CORE: Small: How False Beliefs Form and How to Correct Them

Modern technologies allow false information to spread faster and further than ever before. There is currently an urgent need to understand the real-world effects of misinformation on people’s beliefs and how to best correct false beliefs. Through a series of laboratory and naturalistic experiments, the project team is examining the effects of repetition on belief in real-world settings and how to more effectively counter-act misinformation.

This project will inform real-world practices aimed at reducing the impact of misinformation. Fact-checking practitioners are consulted to help guide the research, and results will be discussed with them.

A series of studies examines how repetition affects belief in daily life. Findings will determine whether the commonly observed effects of repetition on belief are generalizable to real-world repetition or if they are an artifact of widespread use of laboratory tasks and materials. The studies explore why repetition increases belief more for some types of information than others.

By examining these basic psychological processes in the primary domain within which they affect daily life – misinformation on social media – this work will have implications for real-world practices aimed at reducing the impact of misinformation. Leveraging core principles of cognitive psychology, another series of studies investigates how to best correct false beliefs.

Using predictions derived from existing theories within memory, language, linguistics and communications, the project is testing various design features hypothesized to improve the effectiveness of misinformation debunking strategies. Findings will reveal the cognitive mechanisms underlying successful misinformation debunking, and how fact-checkers should best present their findings.

Overall, the results will inform and constrain current theories of how beliefs form and can be changed.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.