Misinformation and Its Correction¶
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(3), 106-131.
Cited by¶
11 citations across 11 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Differential Decay
- Retraction-resistant misinformation: a published claim and its later retraction, where citation networks carry the original long after the retraction has decayed from awareness, propagating a claim its source repudiated.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The abstract backs misinformation persisting despite retraction and corrections backfiring, but never mentions citation networks carrying retracted claims, so it covers only the memory-level half of this definition.
“We look at people’s memory for misinformation and answer the questions of why retractions of misinformation are so ineffective in memory updating and why efforts to retract misinformation can even backfire and, ironically, increase misbelief.”
- Retraction-resistant misinformation: a published claim and its later retraction, where citation networks carry the original long after the retraction has decayed from awareness, propagating a claim its source repudiated.
Domain-specific¶
- Asymmetric-Amplitude Error Correction
- The pattern is distinct from the cognitive continued-influence effect (in which a receiver persists in a belief even after seeing a correction)
This sourceThe review of misinformation and its correction, which examines the cognitive factors that render misinformation resistant to correction and the persistent influence of retracted claims on belief.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
“why retractions of misinformation are so ineffective in memory updating”
- The pattern is distinct from the cognitive continued-influence effect (in which a receiver persists in a belief even after seeing a correction)
- Correction Burial
- The population that saw the original and never encountered the correction retains the false belief indefinitely, and even the population that encounters the correction may only partially update, because the continued influence effect means that corrected misinformation leaves residual traces even when consciously disavowed
This sourceReview reporting that misinformation is resistant to correction, that retractions are ineffective in memory updating, and that retraction attempts can backfire.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
“We look at people's memory for misinformation and answer the questions of why retractions of misinformation are so ineffective in memory updating and why efforts to retract misinformation can even backfire and, ironically, increase misbelief.”
- The population that saw the original and never encountered the correction retains the false belief indefinitely, and even the population that encounters the correction may only partially update, because the continued influence effect means that corrected misinformation leaves residual traces even when consciously disavowed
- Poisoning the Well
- Separating who is discredited from when also distinguishes the move from neighbors — it is not ad hominem in response to an argument, nor a genetic attack on an idea's origin, nor a strawman misrepresenting the content, but a pre-emptive strike on a source before it speaks — and from defamation, since a poisoning frame can be true-but-irrelevant and still fallacious. Order-of-events / predictive reasoning reads the anchoring dynamics: the earlier the frame and the more vivid or emotionally charged it is, the more it persists and the higher the cognitive cost of revising away from it
This sourceReviews how misinformation keeps influencing reasoning after correction and why retractions often fail, the persistence side of the claim, not its earlier-and-more-vivid gradient.
Supported in partVerified against the source
- Separating who is discredited from when also distinguishes the move from neighbors — it is not ad hominem in response to an argument, nor a genetic attack on an idea's origin, nor a strawman misrepresenting the content, but a pre-emptive strike on a source before it speaks — and from defamation, since a poisoning frame can be true-but-irrelevant and still fallacious. Order-of-events / predictive reasoning reads the anchoring dynamics: the earlier the frame and the more vivid or emotionally charged it is, the more it persists and the higher the cognitive cost of revising away from it
Mechanisms¶
- Audience Inference, Emotion, Memory, and Action Experiment
- … real effects rather than intent or structure, and it catches the two things everyone else misses: the emotional and stigma load, and the caveat that fades from memory while the image persists — the continued-influence effect, where a vivid claim keeps shaping judgment after its correction has been forgotten.
This sourceDefines the continued-influence effect as corrected misinformation continuing to shape reasoning.
- … real effects rather than intent or structure, and it catches the two things everyone else misses: the emotional and stigma load, and the caveat that fades from memory while the image persists — the continued-influence effect, where a vivid claim keeps shaping judgment after its correction has been forgotten.
- Contextual Correction Card
- Its failure mode is the instructional correction: a card that, in the name of thoroughness, restates the rumor prominently
This sourceWarns that repeating a rumor during correction can increase its familiarity and memorability, recommending emphasis on corrective facts instead.
- Its failure mode is the instructional correction: a card that, in the name of thoroughness, restates the rumor prominently
- Fact-Checking with Harm Awareness
- Its own failure mode is the continued influence effect — the finding that a vividly-stated falsehood keeps shaping belief even after people have accepted the correction, especially when the debunk repeats the falsehood before replacing it.
This sourceReviews the continued influence of misinformation after correction and the cognitive mechanisms that make retractions ineffective.
- Its own failure mode is the continued influence effect — the finding that a vividly-stated falsehood keeps shaping belief even after people have accepted the correction, especially when the debunk repeats the falsehood before replacing it.
- Public Correction and Repair Statement
- Its central design constraint is the continued influence effect,
This sourceReviews the continued-influence effect whereby retracted misinformation still shapes reasoning and finds corrections more effective when they provide a coherent causal alternative that replaces the original account.
- Its central design constraint is the continued influence effect,
- Rumor Containment Protocol
- The guarding discipline is prebunking and careful framing: get ahead of predictable rumors with inoculation before they spread, lead corrections with the truth rather than the falsehood, and reserve the protocol for claims verified false, not merely unwelcome.
This sourceReviews advance warnings and fact-centered corrections as ways to inoculate audiences and reduce the continued influence of misinformation.
- The guarding discipline is prebunking and careful framing: get ahead of predictable rumors with inoculation before they spread, lead corrections with the truth rather than the falsehood, and reserve the protocol for claims verified false, not merely unwelcome.
- Rumor Prebuttal Brief
- Its strength is that preempting beats correcting: forewarning blunts a claim before it sets, whereas a correction issued afterward has to fight the continued influence effect
This sourceShows that preexposure warnings can reduce misinformation effects and that misinformation can continue to shape reasoning after correction.
- Its strength is that preempting beats correcting: forewarning blunts a claim before it sets, whereas a correction issued afterward has to fight the continued influence effect
- Source Disclosure Brief
- Repeating a false claim in order to debunk it can entrench it, because familiarity outlives the correction — the continued-influence effect — and a widely distributed brief can carry a weak claim to audiences who had never heard it.
This sourceWarns that repeating misinformation during a correction can increase its familiarity and thereby risk reinforcing belief in the false claim.
- Repeating a false claim in order to debunk it can entrench it, because familiarity outlives the correction — the continued-influence effect — and a widely distributed brief can carry a weak claim to audiences who had never heard it.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 4 of 11 citations: 4 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
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