To what extent can be the influence of misinformation be reduced?
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Course
History And Theory Of Psychology
Institution
City University (City)
Misinformation also known as false belief usually starts from rumours sometime (sometimes from politicians in the name of propaganda) however they don’t always intend to mislead. Inaccuracies in one’s mind often implants misleading information in their memory of certain events. People rely on i...
To what extent can be the influence of misinformation
be reduced?
Misinformation also known as false belief usually starts from rumours sometime (sometimes from
politicians in the name of propaganda) however they don’t always intend to mislead. Inaccuracies in
one’s mind often implants misleading information in their memory of certain events. People rely on
inceptive information even though this information is later corrected. The internet plays a major part
in the spread of biased information. Nobody proof reads and filters unessential information when
posting on the internet unlike books which are reviewed by many before getting published. In
addition to the internet, there is also the media. The media has a very strong appeal towards the
society and anything said in the news will easily spread. This community prefers to rely on initial
information as they rather have wrong event model to an incomplete event model (de Vega, Urrutia,
& Riffo, 2007). The influence of misinformation cannot just be named as ignorance; it is just lack of
relevant information. This essay is going to explain how false belief may be reduced.
Humans create models of unfolding events (H. M. Johnson & Seifert, 1994). When central
information is invalidated due to a retraction, the human mind is left with a blank. This is not easily
accepted by the brain, this makes them uncomfortable; therefore humans rely back on the
misinformation in spite of being fully conscious of the correction. This is also due to the fact that
people rely on “metacognitive experience of fluency” to watch over the validity of their thoughts, as
long as there is a flow of the events in their mind (M. K. Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993).
From this one would understand that people like to have complete models of events than
incomplete set of events. The failure of memory process that is controlled is also another
explanation for the influence of misinformation. Humans remember the right information but deliver
it in the wrong manner leading to misinformation. Another misinformation effect could be a failure
of strategic monitoring (Moscovitch & Melo, 1997). This means that a misinformation may be
activated due to interrogation. It is also suggested that processing a correction is like adding a
“negation tag” to an event (Gilbert et al., 1990). Due to the cognitive load, the negation tag will be
discounted leaving only the misinformation left; this is why it is hard to discount it.
Misinformation can be reduced to a point but it cannot be fully eliminated. One very efficient way to
help discount initial information is by explicit warnings; however they must be specific warning,
explaining the effect of the misinformation, to be able to have an influence. Those who were given
specific warnings on “continued influence of misinformation” were easily able to correct invalid
data. Some were told that retracted information may not always be accurate and not properly
disseminated, this hardly helped eliminate disbeliefs. Psychologists also tried to give pre-exposure
warning with additional explanations for the altered information; this was found to be the most
effective way to reduce the influence of false beliefs (Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Tang, D. T. W,
2010). Therefore, it is essential to supply a replacement theory to diminish the misinformation (H.
M. Johnson & Seifert, 1994). Participants believing in unproven corrections are may guide to
continued reliance on misinformation, in which case warnings help illuminate the fact that they are
not supposed to be relying on invalid information. Encodings are more adequate when warnings are
given beforehand. It has been reported by Neuschatz et al. (2003) that warnings are highly
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