Terrorists brought down the plane!—No, actually it was a technical fault: Processing corrections of emotive information

Abstract

It is well known that people often continue to rely on initial misinformation even if this information is later corrected and even if the correction itself is remembered. This article investigated the impact of emotionality of the material on people's ability to discount corrected misinformation. The focus was on moderate levels of emotionality comparable to those elicited by real-world news reports. Emotionality has frequently been shown to have an impact upon reasoning and memory, but the generality of this influence remains unclear. In three experiments, participants read a report of a fictitious plane crash that was initially associated with either an emotionally laden cause (terrorist attack) or an emotionally more neutral cause (bad weather). This initial attribution was followed by a retraction and presentation of an alternative cause (faulty fuel tank). The scenarios demonstrably affected participants' self-reported feelings. However, all three experiments showed that emotionality does not affect the continued influence of misinformation.

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