Pictures and repeated exposure increase perceived accuracy of news headlines
Abstract
Summary: Fake news, deliberately inaccurate and often biased information that is presented as accurate reporting, is perceived as a serious threat. Recent research on fake news has documented a high general susceptibility to the phenomenon and has focused on investigating potential explanatory factors. The present study examined how features of news headlines affected their perceived accuracy. Across four experiments (total N = 659), we examined the effects of pictures, perceptual clarity, and repeated exposure on the perceived accuracy of news headlines. In all experiments, participants received a set of true and false news headlines and rated their accuracy. The presence of pictures and repeated exposure increased perceived accuracy, whereas manipulations of perceptual clarity did not show the predicted effects. The effects of pictures and repeated exposure were similar for true and false headlines. These results demonstrate that accompanying pictures and repeated exposure can affect evaluations of truth of news headlines.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Simply being exposed to misinformation can increase subsequent belief.
“Reducing the sharing of misinformation is of substantial importance, because simply being exposed to misinformation can increase subsequent belief13,20–22.”
From Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation (2022) · cites this paper as [20]
Cites
The spread of true and false news online
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aap9559 · Cited by 8,847 · see citing works
Lazer, D. M. J., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., Metzger, M. J., Nyhan, B., Pennycook, G., Rothschild, D., et al. (2018) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aao2998 · Cited by 4,160 · see citing works
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011 · Cited by 2,022 · see citing works
Tandoc, E. C., Lim, Z.-W., & Ling, R. (2018) · Digital Journalism · doi:10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143 · Cited by 1,606 · see citing works
Ease of retrieval as information: another look at the availability heuristic
Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.195 · Cited by 1,412 · see citing works
Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news
Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018) · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · doi:10.1037/xge0000465 · Cited by 1,268 · see citing works
Many Labs 2: Investigating variation in replicability across samples and settings
Klein, R. A., Vianello, M., Hasselman, F., Adams, B. G., Adams, R. B., Alper, S., Aveyard, M., Axt, J. R., Babalola, M. T., Bahník, Š., et al. (2018) · Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/2515245918810225 · Cited by 944 · see citing works
Frequency and the conference of referential validity
Hasher, L., Goldstein, D., & Toppino, T. (1977) · Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior · doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(77)80012-1 · Cited by 920 · see citing works
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2020) · Journal of Personality · doi:10.1111/jopy.12476 · Cited by 879 · see citing works
Assessing miserly information processing: An expansion of the Cognitive Reflection Test
Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2014) · Thinking & Reasoning · doi:10.1080/13546783.2013.844729 · Cited by 864 · see citing works
Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning.
Alter, A. L., Oppenheimer, D. M., Epley, N., & Eyre, R. N. (2007) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.4.569 · Cited by 844 · see citing works
Effects of Perceptual Fluency on Judgments of Truth
Reber, R., & Schwarz, N. (1999) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1006/ccog.1999.0386 · Cited by 843 · see citing works
Investigating an alternate form of the cognitive reflection test
Thomson, K. S., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2016) · Judgment and Decision Making · doi:10.1017/s1930297500007622 · Cited by 612 · see citing works
Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth.
Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N. M., Payne, B. K., & Marsh, E. J. (2015) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/xge0000098 · Cited by 598 · see citing works
Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief
Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1215647 · Cited by 589 · see citing works
A picture is worth a thousand lies: Using false photographs to create false childhood memories
Wade, K. A., Garry, M., Read, J. D., & Lindsay, D. S. (2002) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/bf03196318 · Cited by 469 · see citing works
Schwarz, N., Sanna, L. J., Skurnik, I., & Yoon, C. (2007) · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(06)39003-x · Cited by 441 · see citing works
If It's Hard to Read, It's Hard to Do
Song, H., & Schwarz, N. (2008) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02189.x · Cited by 346 · see citing works
Baron, J., Scott, S., Fincher, K., & Emlen Metz, S. (2015) · Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2014.09.003 · Cited by 346 · see citing works
Bronstein, M. V., Pennycook, G., Bear, A., Rand, D. G., & Cannon, T. D. (2019) · Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2018.09.005 · Cited by 324 · see citing works
Primi, C., Morsanyi, K., Chiesi, F., Donati, M. A., & Hamilton, J. (2015) · Journal of Behavioral Decision Making · doi:10.1002/bdm.1883 · Cited by 303 · see citing works
The effects of subtle misinformation in news headlines.
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Chang, E. P., & Pillai, R. (2014) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied · doi:10.1037/xap0000028 · Cited by 287 · see citing works
True Photographs and False Memories
Lindsay, D. S., Hagen, L., Read, J. D., Wade, K. A., & Garry, M. (2004) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.01503002.x · Cited by 267 · see citing works
Thompson, V. A., Turner, J. A. P., Pennycook, G., Ball, L. J., Brack, H., Ophir, Y., & Ackerman, R. (2012) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2012.09.012 · Cited by 218 · see citing works
Song, H., & Schwarz, N. (2008) · Social Cognition · doi:10.1521/soco.2008.26.6.791 · Cited by 196 · see citing works
Truth by Repetition: Explanations and Implications
Unkelbach, C., Koch, A. S., Silva, R. R., & Garcia‐Marques, T. (2019) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721419827854 · Cited by 183 · see citing works
Spontaneous Discounting of Availability in Frequency Judgment Tasks
Oppenheimer, D. M. (2004) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01502005.x · Cited by 178 · see citing works
Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness
Newman, E. J., Garry, M., Bernstein, D. M., Kantner, J., & Lindsay, D. S. (2012) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-012-0292-0 · Cited by 176 · see citing works
False memories of fabricated political events
Frenda, S. J., Knowles, E. D., Saletan, W., & Loftus, E. F. (2013) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2012.10.013 · Cited by 146 · see citing works
Oldrati, V., Patricelli, J., Colombo, B., & Antonietti, A. (2016) · Neuropsychologia · doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.09.010 · Cited by 141 · see citing works
A multinomial modeling approach to dissociate different components of the truth effect
Unkelbach, C., & Stahl, C. (2008) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2008.09.006 · Cited by 118 · see citing works
Disfluent fonts don’t help people solve math problems.
Meyer, A., Frederick, S., Burnham, T. C., Pinto, J. D. G., Boyer, T. W., Ball, L. J., Pennycook, G., Ackerman, R., Thompson, V. A., & Schuldt, J. P. (2015) · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · doi:10.1037/xge0000049 · Cited by 109 · see citing works
On the Existence and Implications of Nonbelieved Memories
Otgaar, H., Scoboria, A., & Mazzoni, G. A. L. (2014) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721414542102 · Cited by 80 · see citing works
False fame prevented: avoiding fluency effects without judgmental correction.
Topolinski, S., & Strack, F. (2010) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0019260 · Cited by 71 · see citing works
Question answering in the context of scientific mechanisms
Graesser, A. C., & Hemphill, D. D. (1991) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1016/0749-596x(91)90003-3 · Cited by 59 · see citing works
Truthiness and falsiness of trivia claims depend on judgmental contexts.
Newman, E. J., Garry, M., Unkelbach, C., Bernstein, D. M., Lindsay, D. S., & Nash, R. A. (2015) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1037/xlm0000099 · Cited by 59 · see citing works
Photographs cause false memories for the news.
Strange, D., Garry, M., Bernstein, D., & Lindsay, D. (2011) · Acta Psychologica · doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.10.006 · Cited by 39 · see citing works
The effect of nonprobative photographs on truthiness persists over time
Fenn, E., Newman, E. J., Pezdek, K., & Garry, M. (2013) · Acta Psychologica · doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.06.004 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
Henkel, L. A. (2009) · Applied Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1002/acp.1644 · Cited by 35 · see citing works
Uninformative photos can increase people's perceived knowledge of complicated processes.
Cardwell, B. A., Lindsay, D. S., Förster, K., & Garry, M. (2017) · Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.05.002 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Post-Test and Evaluation for Child & Adolescent Psychopharmacology News 21(5)
(2016) · Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology News · doi:10.1521/capn.2016.21.5.11 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Photographs elevate truth judgments about less well-known people (but not yourself).
Abed, E., Fenn, E., & Pezdek, K. (2017) · Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.01.007 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2021) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007 · Cited by 1,360 · see citing works
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2022) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-022-30073-5 · Cited by 270 · see citing works
Understanding and Combating Misinformation Across 16 Countries on Six Continents
Arechar, A. A., Allen, J. N. L., Berinsky, A. J., Cole, R., Epstein, Z., Garimella, K., Gully, A., Lu, J. G., Ross, R. M., Stagnaro, M., et al. (2022) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/a9frz · Cited by 25 · see citing works
- Authors
- Smelter, T. J., & Calvillo, D. P.
- Affiliations
- California State University, San Marcos (US)
- Corresponding author
- Calvillo, Dustin P.
- ORCID
- Calvillo, Dustin P.
- Venue
- Applied Cognitive Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2020-05-10
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1061-1071
- ISSN
- 0888-4080 (ISSN-L)
- 1099-0720
- OpenAlex
- W3022571189
- Cited by
- 58
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6
- FWCI
- 12.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Applied Cognitive Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Deception detection and forensic psychology
- Social Sciences › Communication › Communication and COVID-19 Impact
- Keywords
- fake news, news headlines, perceived accuracy, images, repeated exposure, misinformation susceptibility, truth evaluation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review