Abstract: Numerical facts play a prominent role in public discourse, but individuals often provide incorrect estimates of policy-relevant numerical quantities (e.g., the number of immigrants in the country). Across two studies, we examined the role of schemas in the creation of numerical misinformation, and how misinformation can spread via person-to-person communication. In our first study, we combined eye movement monitoring and behavioral methods to examine how schemas distorted what people remembered about policy-relevant numerical information. Then, in a second study, we examined the consequences of these memory distortions via the social transmission of numerical information, using the serial reproduction paradigm. We found that individuals misremembered numerical information in a manner consistent with their schemas, and that person-to-person transmission can exacerbate these memory errors. Our studies highlight the mechanisms supporting the generation and spread of numerical misinformation and demonstrate the utility of a multi-method approach in the study of misinformation.
Popular version: You create your own false information, study finds - People misremember numerical facts to fit their biases. Ohio State Univ, Dec 9 2019. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-12/osu-ycy120619.php (h/t Reddit u/Lightfiend)
General discussion
Across Studies 1 and 2, we examined instances in which individuals were exposed to accurate numerical information from an external source, but schemas led them to misremember information. Participants in Study 1 directed a greater amount of attention to numerical information when their referent order was schema inconsistent than when that order was schema consistent, likely because it violated their expectations (Loftus & Mackworth, 1978; Underwood & Foulsham, 2006). However, greater attention to the schema-inconsistent paragraphs did not translate into better memory accuracy, as participants’ pairwise gist memories were less accurate for schema-inconsistent than -consistent information. According to misremembering models, this is because inconsistent information was misremembered in a way that aligned with people’s schemas. In Studies 2a and 2b, we showed that these memory distortions can have consequences beyond the individual that generated them, once person-to-person transmission processes are introduced. We examined instances in which factually accurate information was inconsistent with people’s schematic expectations. Over the course of re-transmission in the serial reproduction paradigm, numerical information was transformed into factually inaccurate but schema-consistent information. These results were obtained across two different samples with two distinct memory tasks. Given our findings, our study has several substantive and methodological contributions. First, our results support misremembering models. Notably, these models predict (and we found evidence here) that greater attention to information will not necessarily lead to better memory for that information. This prediction is in stark contrast to some views in the message-processing literature, which subscribe to the prediction of attention-memory models and specify a positive relationship between attention and memory (Jeong & Hwang, 2016; Kim & Southwell, 2017; Segijn et al., 2017; Young et al., 2018). Second, our results point to the important conceptual distinction between internal and external sources of misinformation (Davis & Loftus, 2007). Importantly, this framework suggests that even if all external sources in the environment are disseminating factually accurate numerical information, individuals can still selfgenerate misinformation and, potentially, spread it from person to person. In addition, although we classified schema-based memory distortions as internal sources of information, the individual possessing inaccurate memories can turn into an external source when he or she passes the information to another person. Third, our results highlight how person-to-person transmission processes can lead to cumulative distortions in numerical information that go beyond the biases of individuals who are positioned earlier in communication chains. This suggests that studies which do not take person-to-person communication processes into account may underestimate the strength of schemas in distorting numerical information. Furthermore, although our focus here was the manner in which person-to-person transmission can distort information, future work should examine the extent to which schemas can preserve the transmission of factually accurate, numerical relationships. Indeed, we observed such a pattern in Studies 2a and 2b for our schemaconsistent issues.
Finally, our studies illustrate the value of a multi-method approach. We used eyemovement monitoring to gain unique leverage on the cognitive mechanisms supporting the creation of schema-based numerical misinformation (for other applications of eye-tracking technology in communication research, see King, Bol, Cummins, & John, 2019). Then, we used the serial reproduction paradigm to investigate the consequences of these cognitive biases by examining the creation and transmission of schema-based, numerical misinformation. As with all studies, our studies have certain limitations and caution is warranted in terms of generalizing some of the study’s findings. Study 1 used a chin-rest eye tracker that restricted participants’ ability to move their heads. Although chin-rest eye trackers generally provide excellent spatial resolution, given that the eyes maintain a constant distance from the screen, individuals in their everyday lives often consume news information without restrictions on their head movements. In our studies, we used short paragraphs. Longer texts that discuss why certain numerical relationships exist (e.g., explanations as to why the number of Mexican immigrants has decreased) may increase the likelihood that people remember schema-inconsistent, numerical information, if individuals also encode explanations for the numerical relationships. We also did not manipulate issue importance. Given related work on the influence of motivated reasoning and issue importance on attitudes in other domains of politics (Slothuus & de Vreese, 2010), individuals may be more likely to misremember schema-inconsistent information for issues that are high in personal importance. Importantly, we also did not measure each of our participant’s specific schemas for what would be considered consistent or inconsistent information for each issue. We assumed, based on the findings from the pre-tests, that most individuals in our studies would possess our expected schemas. However, it is likely that there were individual differences in people’s schematic representations or levels of motivation for maintaining desired, schema-consistent information (Tappin, van der Leer, & McKay, 2017). Future work should investigate the individual differences that can moderate the effects of schema consistency on memory for policy-relevant, numerical facts.14 In addition, our version of the serial reproduction paradigm does not reflect all the complexities involved in actual social transmission. Actual social transmission is influenced by many interpersonal and situational factors. We used the serial reproduction paradigm to look specifically at the critical role of memory for numerical information. Memory is arguably an important component of social transmission, given that individuals cannot transmit information to others if they do not possess memory of that information. However, the serial reproduction paradigm can be adapted to reflect elements of actual social transmission (e.g., two-way discussion, receiving information from multiple partners, evaluating information from a friend versus a stranger, etc.; for a review and examples, see Mesoudi &Whiten, 2008), which future work can explore. For example, source characteristics, such as knowledgeable individuals or in-group membership, have been shown to influence people’s memory for, and attitudes towards, the socially transmitted information (Carlson, 2019; Lee, Gelfand, & Kashima, 2014).
In summary, our studies show the importance of memory biases and the role of re-transmission in the reinforcement and spread of numerical misinformation. Our results demonstrate how schemas, in conjunction with re-transmission, can generate inaccurate information, facilitate the spread of inaccurate information from person to person, and exacerbate these errors through cumulative distortion, resulting from serial reproduction. Our findings are relevant to important questions about whether individuals possess an accurate understanding of the political world. Policy-relevant numerical facts play a prominent role in public discourse, as politicians, journalists, and interest groups use them as evidence to advocate for, or fight against, certain political causes. The ability of individuals to possess accurate representations of numerical facts may help protect them from the various forms of deceptive persuasion they encounter in their everyday lives.
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