‘Fake news’: Incorrect, but hard to correct. The role of cognitive ability on the impact of false information on social impressions

By J. keersmaecker, Arne Roets. 2017

293 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The present experiment (N = 390) examined how people adjust their judgment after they learn that crucial information on which their initial evaluation was based is incorrect. In line with our expectations, the results showed that people generally do adjust their attitudes, but the degree to which they correct their assessment depends on their cognitive ability. In particular, individuals with lower levels of cognitive ability adjusted their attitudes to a lesser extent than individuals with higher levels of cognitive ability. Moreover, for those with lower levels of cognitive ability, even after the explicit disconfirmation of the false information, adjusted attitudes remained biased and significantly different from the attitudes of the control group who was never exposed to the incorrect information. In contrast, the adjusted attitudes of those with higher levels of cognitive ability were similar to those of the control group. Controlling for need for closure and right-wing authoritarianism did not influence the relationship between cognitive ability and attitude adjustment. The present results indicate that, even in optimal circumstances, the initial influence of incorrect information cannot simply be undone by pointing out that this information was incorrect, especially in people with relatively lower cognitive ability.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6fbb93b39ba5dfaf4031812e431ba14130e2d931

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Prebunking interventions based on the psychological theory of “inoculation” can reduce susceptibility to misinformation across cultures. (2020, background): “In particular, it has been shown that debunking and fact-checking can lack effectiveness because of the continued influence of misinformation: once people are exposed to a falsehood, it is difficult to correct (De keersmaecker & Roets, 2017; Lewandowsky et al., 2012).”
Effects of COVID-19 Misinformation on Information Seeking, Avoidance, and Processing: A Multicountry Comparative Study (2020, background): “Researchers suggest that older adults (Mitchell et al., 2003), those with lower cognitive ability (De keersmaecker & Roets, 2017), and those who are less educated (Kalichman et al., 2006) are more likely to be misinformed than those who are younger, have higher cognitive ability, or are more…”
Combating Fake News (2019, background): “Another study examined the impact of cognitive ability on the durability of opinions to find that individuals with lower cognitive ability adjusted their assessments after being told that the information given was incorrect but not nearly to the same extent as those with higher cognitive ability [93”
The psychological roots of intellectual humility: The role of intelligence and cognitive flexibility (2019, background): “Interestingly, De keersmaecker and Roets (2017) found that cognitive ability shaped the extent to which individuals adjust their beliefs after learning that their attitudes were based on false information; people with lower levels of cognitive ability adjust their attitudes to a lesser extent than t”
The Reception of Fake News: The Interpretations and Practices That Shape the Consumption of Perceived Misinformation (2019, background): “…that users assign to the shared stories, accounts about the appropriation of fake news have often adopted cognitive perspectives to analyze who are more likely to read, believe and/or share fake news (De keersmaecker and Roets 2017; Guess et al. 2018; Pennycook and Rand 2018; Schulz et al. 2018).”