(The Ohio State University)
Corrections of Misinformation Can Make People Uncomfortable: Why This Happens and Why it Matters
Much research demonstrates that people continue to believe misinformation even after it has been retracted. Many prominent explanations for this effect argue that it emerges from cognitive processes. However, there is reason to believe that motivational processes also play an important role. Specifically, in this talk I argue that corrections of misinformation can cause people to feel uncomfortable, and this discomfort motivates people to reject correcting information and continue believing misinformation. I present research documenting antecedents of this discomfort (threats to causal understanding, threats to attitude validity, and threats to the self), methods to redirect responses to discomfort from corrections to reduce continued belief in misinformation (positive reappraisal of discomfort and misattribution of discomfort), and novel consequences discomfort from corrections can have (misinformation-validating information seeking and sharing of misinformation-validating information). This research demonstrates that discomfort plays an important mechanistic role in the emergence of continued belief in misinformation.