Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA.
Department of Psychology, Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA.
Memory. 2020 May;28(5):617-631. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2020.1752731. Epub 2020 Apr 17.
News stories unfold over time, with initial reports sometimes containing mistaken accounts of the newsworthy outcome that are ultimately revised or corrected. Because facts associated with newsworthy events are accumulated in this piecemeal fashion, readers often have repeated opportunities to reflect upon, discuss, and evaluate their belief in these accounts before they learn that initial news reports have been revised or retracted. The primary goal of the present study was to assess whether rating the strength of one's belief in the initially reported, mistaken cause might influence the efficacy of a later correction. In the current study, participants evaluated their belief in the target cause by either rating how much they believed it caused the outcome (Experiment 1) or rating the probability that the target caused the outcome (Experiment 2). The results showed that evaluating belief in a target cause prior to its retraction (relative to not doing so) rendered the correction more effective. This enhanced correction effect was not observed when participants generated the target information prior to its retraction (Experiment 3). Collectively, the results suggest that it is not how much people believe something, but whether they have thought about why they do or do not believe it, that affects their later willingness to revise their mistaken beliefs.
新闻故事随着时间的推移展开，最初的报道有时会包含对有新闻价值的结果的错误描述，这些错误最终会被修正或更正。由于与有新闻价值的事件相关的事实是零碎地积累起来的，读者通常有多次机会在他们得知最初的新闻报道已经被修正或撤回之前，重新思考、讨论和评估他们对这些报道的信任。本研究的主要目的是评估对最初报道的错误原因的置信度进行评分是否会影响后续更正的效果。在本研究中，参与者通过对他们相信该目标原因导致结果的程度进行评分（实验 1）或对目标原因导致结果的概率进行评分（实验 2）来评估他们对目标原因的信任度。结果表明，在目标原因被撤回之前评估对其的信任度（相对于不进行评估）会使更正更加有效。当参与者在目标信息被撤回之前生成该信息时（实验 3），没有观察到这种增强的更正效果。总的来说，这些结果表明，影响人们后来是否愿意修正错误信念的因素不是他们相信某件事情的程度，而是他们是否思考过自己为什么相信或不相信它。
