Misinformation: Current directions and new insights.
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This special issue presents new insights into how misinformation can shape memory, beliefs, and evidence evaluation. Studies highlight the robustness of the illusory truth effect across languages and formats and explore how encouraging active scrutiny can reduce postevent misinformation effects. They further inspect the notion that false beliefs and judgments can stem from both "lazy" intuitive processing and motivated reasoning and that detection of misinformation and its "fingerprints" can rely on both explicit and tacit knowledge. Studies also test a range of interventions to boost detection of false headlines and deceptive statements and to improve evidence-based reasoning. Findings demonstrate that intervention effectiveness is influenced by individual differences and context factors such as claims' factual ambiguity. Finally, new research on contextual biases shows that knowledge can affect judgment in surprising ways. Overall, the section calls for theoretical integration and nuanced investigation, particularly given current challenges such as artifically generated misinformation and shifting epistemic norms.
DOI: 10.1037/mac0000229
Author: Ullrich K. H. Ecker
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4410598362