Abstract

During the past couple of years, political events and world health crises have shown the drastic negative impact of fake news propagated through social media. Past studies have shown that repeated information is more likely to be believed. This phenomenon is called the illusory truth effect, and it can occur with repeated exposure to article headlines accompanied by photographs. Studies have shown that direct warning labels indicating article headlines are false reduce the illusory truth effect and, therefore, people's belief in repeated false information. However, only labeling false information has an unintended consequence of increasing the perceived validity of not labeled false information. This phenomenon is called the implied truth effect. A study has shown that providing labels for both true and false article headlines can reduce the illusory truth effect and the implied truth effect. However, these studies were done in a typical laboratory procedure where article headlines are presented one at a time. Unlike past research, the current study presents article headlines in a social media setting that mimics the environment in which participants encounter article headlines in the real world. By doing so, the current study aimed to test the effectiveness of warning labels at reducing the illusory truth effect and the implied truth effect in the real-world setting. The study found that warning labels effectively reduce the illusory truth effect even in a social media setting. However, providing labels for both true and false article headlines did not reduce the implied truth effect.

Advisor

Foster, Nathan

Department

Neuroscience

Disciplines

Cognitive Neuroscience

Keywords

Fake news, illusory truth effect, misinformation

Publication Date

2022

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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