Cited by 1,268Misinformation and Its ImpactsEpistemology, Ethics, and MetaphysicsDeception detection and forensic psychology

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Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news

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Pennycook, Gordon, Cannon, Tyrone D., Rand, David G.·2018·Journal of Experimental Psychology General

DOI 10.1037/xge0000465PMC PMC6279465

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Abstract

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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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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“…of online disinformation is of growing interest among scholars from different disciplines such as communications, political science and psychology (Ciampaglia et al. 2018; Guess and Lyons 2020; Lewan-dowsky, Ecker, and Cook 2017; Pennycook, Cannon, and Rand 2018; Tandoc, Lim, and Ling 2017).”
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“This shift has implications for trust in media, as the proliferation of synthetic visuals has been shown to increase cynicism and reduce public confidence in legitimate news sources (Pennycook et al., 2018).”
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“The presentation of the new articles was modeled after previous research examining factors related to sharing news on social-media sites (e.g., Mosleh et al., 2020; Pennycook et al., 2018; Pennycook & Rand, 2018) and was designed to resemble how people might see news headlines on social-media sites.”
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“Contrary to many dual-process theories, which view rationalizing as a failure to correct an incorrect IR1 due to insuf ﬁ cient System 2 engagement - as Pennycook et al. (2015) do - there is evidence that error-inducing biases affect both intuitive and analytical processes (Felin & Koenderink, 2022; Melnikoff & Bargh,…”
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“It is widely known that repetition is an important factor in believing fake news (Dechene et al., 2010; Fazio et al., 2015; Hasher et al., 1977), but recent findings show that reading the headline even one time might increase the perception of credibility and truth (Pennycook et al., 2018).”
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Authors: Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G.
Affiliations: Yale University (US)
ORCID: Pennycook, Gordon
Cannon, Tyrone D.
Rand, David G.
Venue: Journal of Experimental Psychology General
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Published: 2018-12
Volume: 147
Issue: 12
Pages: 1865-1880
ISSN: 0096-3445 (ISSN-L)
1939-2222
DOI: 10.1037/xge0000465
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
Licence: other-oa
www.apa.org/pubs/journals/resources/open-access.aspx (am, 297 d)
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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Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news

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