Repetition increases both the perceived truth and fakeness of information: An ecological account
Open accessAbstract
People believe repeated statements more compared to new statements - they show a truth by repetition effect. In three pre-registered experiments, we show that repetition may also increase perceptions that statements are used as fake news on social media, irrespective of the factual truth or falsehood of the statements (Experiment 1 & 2), but that repetition reduces perceptions of falsehood when the context of judgment is left unspecified (Experiment 3). On a theoretical level, the findings support an ecological account of repetition effects, as opposed to either a fluency-as-positivity or to an amplification account of these effects. On a practical level, they qualify the influence of repetition on the perception of fake news.
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Simply being exposed to misinformation can increase subsequent belief.
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From Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation (2022) · cites this paper as [21]
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- Authors
- Corneille, O., Mierop, A., & Unkelbach, C.
- Affiliations
- UCLouvain (BE)
- University of Cologne (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Corneille, Olivier
- Venue
- Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020-12
- Volume
- 205
- Pages
- 104470
- ISSN
- 0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3089535848
- Cited by
- 57
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 12.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- erratum (2022-03-01)
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Kölner Universitäts PublikationsServer (Universität zu Köln) (publishedVersion)
- Digital Access to Libraries (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Deception detection and forensic psychology
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Keywords
- repetition effects, perceived truth, fake news, social media, belief formation
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Judgment, Deception, Social Media
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