False information is harder to debunk after gist repetitions than verbatim repetitions

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that repeating a claim increases belief in it and makes it more difficult to correct. This is referred to as the illusory truth effect. Previous studies have mostly examined the illusory truth effect in a verbatim paradigm, that is, when information is repeated word-for-word. In the present study, we looked at the difference between repeating a claim word-for-word and repeating only its gist, and how both these contexts can mitigate belief in false information that is refuted or not. Results show that gist and verbatim repetitions both lead to high, and relatively equal, levels of belief when they are not disconfirmed, and that a subsequent correction is more effective in lowering belief levels after verbatim than after gist repetition. This provides evidence that the way in which information is repeated has a differential impact on our ability to debias it.

KEYWORDS:

• Fake news
• truth-effect
• continued influence effect
• gist vs. verbatim processing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

All data and materials are publicly available at OSF (https://osf.io/qt4jh/)

Ethics approval

This study received ethical approval by the IRB of the Université du Québec à Montréal (3508_2020).

Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Notes

1 The results are qualitatively identical with the full sample, but we report analyses with participants removed.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Vanier Graduate scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to CG, the Alexander Graham Bell Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to EGS, and by an Insight grant (435-2019-0655) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to HM.