ArticleCognitive research: principles and implications2020
An initial accuracy focus reduces the effect of prior exposure on perceived accuracy of news headlines.
Article in Cognitive research: principles and implications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence for an illusory truth effect and its determinants.Nature communications · 2026Pooled it
- Spotting false news and doubting true news: a systematic review and meta-analysis of news judgements.Nature human behaviour · 2025Pooled it
- Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation.Nature communications · 2022Pooled it
- Article
- The illusory-truth effect and its absence under accuracy-focused processing are robust across contexts of low and high advertising exposure.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2025Article
- The development of media truth discernment and fake news detection is related to the development of reasoning during adolescence.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Media choice and audience perceptions: Evidence from visual framing of immigration in news stories.PloS one · 2025Article
- Article
- Accuracy prompts protect professional content moderators from the illusory truth effect.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- The Influence of Affective Empathy on Online News Belief: The Moderated Mediation of State Empathy and News Type.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Understanding and combatting misinformation across 16 countries on six continents.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- An ongoing secondary task can reduce the illusory truth effect.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Distractions, analytical thinking and falling for fake news: A survey of psychological factors.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2023Review
- Review
- Fake news: Why do we believe it?Joint bone spine · 2022Article
- The influence of fake news on face-trait learning.PloS one · 2022Article
- Debunking health myths on the internet: the persuasive effect of (visual) online communication.Zeitschrift fur Gesundheitswissenschaften = Journal of public health · 2022Article
- Individual Differences in Belief in Fake News about Election Fraud after the 2020 U.S. Election.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The illusory truth effect occurs when the repetition of a claim increases its perceived truth. Previous studies have demonstrated the illusory truth effect with true and false news headlines. The present study examined the effects that different ratings made during initial exposure have on the illusory truth effect with news headlines. In two experiments, participants (total N = 575) rated a set of news headlines in one of two conditions. Some participants rated how interesting they were, and others rated how truthful they were. Participants later rated the perceived accuracy of a larger set of headlines that included previously rated and new headlines. In both experiments, prior exposure increased perceived accuracy for participants who made initial interest ratings, but not for participants who made initial truthfulness ratings. The increase in perceived accuracy that accompanies repeated exposure was attenuated when participants considered the accuracy of the headlines at initial exposure. Experiment 2 also found evidence for a political bias: participants rated politically concordant headlines as more accurate than politically discordant headlines. The magnitude of this bias was related to performance on a cognitive reflection test; more analytic participants demonstrated greater political bias. These results highlight challenges that fake news presents and suggest that initially encoding headlines' perceived truth can serve to combat the illusion that a familiar headline is a truthful one.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.