How Susceptible Are You? Using Feedback and Monitoring to Reduce the Influence of False Information

Exposures to false ideas can result in that information being remembered later, inappropriately identified as valid, and reproduced on subsequent tasks. Previous work has shown that evaluative tasks beneficially increase people's use of correct prior knowledge over presented inaccuracies but often rely on explicit instructions to instantiate an evaluative mindset. We examined whether and how confronting people about their potential susceptibility to the influence of false information might motivate evaluation and reduce reproductions of inaccurate ideas. Participants made nonevaluative interest ratings about true and false statements and then answered related general knowledge questions. In Experiment 1, participants who received positive or negative performance feedback about their susceptibility to inaccurate information reproduced fewer incorrect ideas and produced more correct answers than did participants who did not receive feedback. In Experiment 2, analogous benefits emerged when participants were simply informed that their use of false information was being monitored.