Scuotto Chiara, Ilardi Ciro Rosario, Avallone Francesco, Maggi Gianpaolo, Ilardi Alfonso, Borrelli Giovanni, Gamboz Nadia, La Marra Marco, Perrella Raffaella
Department of Psychology, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, 81100 Caserta, Italy.
Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3S1Z1, Canada.
Brain Sci. 2021 Nov 11;11(11):1489. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11111489.
The exposure to relevant social and/or historical events can increase the generation of false memories (FMs). The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a calamity challenging health, political, and journalistic bodies, with media generating confusion that has facilitated the spread of fake news. In this respect, our study aims at investigating the relationships between memories (true memories, TMs vs. FMs) for COVID-19-related news and different individual variables (i.e., use of traditional and social media, COVID-19 perceived and objective knowledge, fear of the disease, depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms). One hundred and seventy-one university students (131 females) were surveyed. Overall, our results suggested that depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms did not affect the formation of FMs. Conversely, the fear of loved ones contracting the infection was found to be negatively associated with FMs. This finding might be due to an empathy/prosociality-based positive bias boosting memory abilities, also explained by the young age of participants. Furthermore, objective knowledge (i) predicted an increase in TMs and decrease in FMs and (ii) significantly mediated the relationships between the use of social media and development of both TMs and FMs. In particular, higher levels of objective knowledge strengthened the formation of TMs and decreased the development of FMs following use of social media. These results may lead to reconsidering the idea of social media as the main source of fake news. This claim is further supported by either the lack of substantial differences between the use of traditional and social media among participants reporting FMs or the positive association between use of social media and levels of objective knowledge. The knowledge about the topic rather than the type of source would make a difference in the process of memory formation.
接触相关的社会和/或历史事件会增加错误记忆（FMs）的产生。2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行是一场对卫生、政治和新闻机构构成挑战的灾难，媒体制造的混乱助长了假新闻的传播。在这方面，我们的研究旨在调查与COVID-19相关新闻的记忆（真实记忆，TMs与FMs）与不同个体变量（即传统媒体和社交媒体的使用、对COVID-19的认知和客观知识、对疾病的恐惧、抑郁和焦虑症状、推理能力以及应对机制）之间的关系。我们对171名大学生（131名女性）进行了调查。总体而言，我们的结果表明，抑郁和焦虑症状、推理能力以及应对机制并未影响错误记忆的形成。相反，发现对亲人感染的恐惧与错误记忆呈负相关。这一发现可能是由于基于同理心/亲社会性的积极偏差提高了记忆能力，参与者的年轻也对此做出了解释。此外，客观知识（i）预测了真实记忆的增加和错误记忆的减少，并且（ii）显著介导了社交媒体使用与真实记忆和错误记忆发展之间的关系。特别是，更高水平的客观知识加强了真实记忆的形成，并减少了使用社交媒体后错误记忆的发展。这些结果可能会促使人们重新思考社交媒体作为假新闻主要来源的观点。报告错误记忆的参与者在传统媒体和社交媒体的使用上缺乏实质性差异，或者社交媒体使用与客观知识水平之间的正相关关系，进一步支持了这一观点。关于该主题的知识而非信息来源的类型，会在记忆形成过程中产生影响。
