Research Commons
      • Browse 
        • Communities & Collections
        • Titles
        • Authors
        • By Issue Date
        • Subjects
        • Types
        • Series
      • Help 
        • About
        • Collection Policy
        • OA Mandate Guidelines
        • Guidelines FAQ
        • Contact Us
      • My Account 
        • Sign In
        • Register
      View Item 
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Theses
      • Masters Degree Theses
      • View Item
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Theses
      • Masters Degree Theses
      • View Item
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

      Medium of mass misinformation: Repetition increases people's rating of truth for real and satirical headlines

      Lin, James
      Thumbnail
      Files
      thesis.pdf
      3.020Mb
      Permanent link to Research Commons version
      https://hdl.handle.net/10289/15219
      Abstract
      Many people have adopted harmful behaviors in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, to the detriment of public health and personal safety of others and themselves. While adoption of these behaviors is often attributed to misinformation in the media, people’s tendency to believe previously seen information as being true is also to blame. This tendency, the illusory truth effect, is explained by the similarity in cues between previously seen information and true information, cues such as the ease of processing or a feeling of familiarity. The illusory truth effect has been previously demonstrated with fake news, but not in many other types of misinformation, such as satire. In two experiments, we address the extent to which people come to see headlines—even ridiculous satirical headlines—as being true if they had seen those headlines two days earlier. We found that people tend to rate previously seen headlines as truer than novel headlines, and to a similar extent regardless of whether those headlines were real or satirical. We also found that informing people that some headlines were satirical headlines did not attenuate the illusory truth effect. These results suggest that people rely on the familiarity of information to determine information to be true, regardless of whether that information is ridiculous or if they had been alerted to the presence of misinformation.
      Date
      2022
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Name
      Master of Science (Research) (MSc(Research))
      Supervisors
      Garry, Maryanne
      Evelo, Andrew
      Publisher
      The University of Waikato
      Rights
      All items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
      Collections
      • Masters Degree Theses [2409]
      Show full item record  

      Usage

      Downloads, last 12 months
      60
       
       

      Usage Statistics

      For this itemFor all of Research Commons

      The University of Waikato - Te Whare Wānanga o WaikatoFeedback and RequestsCopyright and Legal Statement