The Effect of Fake News on Memory for True Events

Abstract

Exposure to false information has the potential to impact how people encode subsequent, factual information that is related to the false information. In the current study, we propose an experiment in which participants read a true or false article about the relationship between the strictness of gun laws and gun violence in each state of the U.S. Afterward, stories of actual shootings are shown to participants. Half of the stories have details that are consistent with the false news article, and half of the stories have details that are consistent with the true news article. Following a brief distractor task, participants are asked to recall as much as they can about each story. We hypothesize that details that are consistent with the conclusion of the previously-read article will be remembered better than inconsistent details.