The DOI matches its Crossref record; 59 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index, and 1 are not checked yet.
Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news
Open accessAbstract
The 2016 U.S. presidential election brought considerable attention to the phenomenon of "fake news": entirely fabricated and often partisan content that is presented as factual. Here we demonstrate one mechanism that contributes to the believability of fake news: fluency via prior exposure. Using actual fake-news headlines presented as they were seen on Facebook, we show that even a single exposure increases subsequent perceptions of accuracy, both within the same session and after a week. Moreover, this "illusory truth effect" for fake-news headlines occurs despite a low level of overall believability and even when the stories are labeled as contested by fact checkers or are inconsistent with the reader's political ideology. These results suggest that social media platforms help to incubate belief in blatantly false news stories and that tagging such stories as disputed is not an effective solution to this problem. It is interesting, however, that we also found that prior exposure does not impact entirely implausible statements (e.g., "The earth is a perfect square"). These observations indicate that although extreme implausibility is a boundary condition of the illusory truth effect, only a small degree of potential plausibility is sufficient for repetition to increase perceived accuracy. As a consequence, the scope and impact of repetition on beliefs is greater than has been previously assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
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“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 [13]
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“Some explanations for belief in misinformation identify factors that resist intervention (4), while others propose policy approaches that are effective in practice but difficult to scale (34, 44).”
From A digital media literacy intervention increases discernment between mainstream and false news in the United States and India (2020) · cites this paper as [44]
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Cites
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Kunda, Z. (1990) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480 · Cited by 9,022
Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure
Zajonc, R. B. (1968) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0025848 · Cited by 6,745
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
Self-citationThe Nature of Recollection and Familiarity: A Review of 30 Years of Research
Yonelinas, A. P. (2002) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1006/jmla.2002.2864 · Cited by 3,840
When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions
Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2 · Cited by 3,173
Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012) · Psychological Science in the Public Interest · doi:10.1177/1529100612451018 · Cited by 2,920
The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks
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Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Pennycook G Rand D 2017a 12 8 The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Stories Increases Perceived Accuracy of Stories Without Warnings Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3035384
- Pennycook G Rand DG 2018 Susceptibility to Partisan Fake News is Explained More by a Lack of Deliberation than by Willful Ignorance SSRN Working Paper Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3165567
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Golovchenko, Y., Buntain, C., Eady, G., Brown, M. A., & Tucker, J. A. (2020) · The International Journal of Press/Politics · doi:10.1177/1940161220912682 · Cited by 179
“A large portion of this research examines these phenomena domestically, often in the U.S. context (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017; Grinberg et al. 2019; Guess et al. 2019; Pennycook et al. 2018).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G.
- Affiliations
- Yale University (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Experimental Psychology General
- Published
- 2018-12
- Volume
- 147
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1865-1880
- ISSN
- 0096-3445 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-2222
- PMC
- PMC6279465
- OpenAlex
- W3125618971
- Cited by
- 1,268
- References
- 58
- Citations by year
- 2026: 117 · 2025: 139 · 2024: 141 · 2023: 204 · 2022: 188 · 2021: 198 · 2020: 180 · 2019: 79 · 2018: 20
- FWCI
- 270.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Experimental Psychology General (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH081902)
- Templeton World Charity Foundation
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Deception detection and forensic psychology
- Keywords
- fake news, illusory truth effect, prior exposure, perceived accuracy, fluency, social media, Facebook, 2016 US presidential election, fact-checking, political ideology, belief formation, repetition
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Judgment, Deception, Male, Perception, Politics, United States, Social Media
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