Drawing Participants Attention to Their Own Biases Reduces Formation of False Memories for Fake News

Abstract

People can easily form false memories for events described in “fake news” stories. This is more likely if the content of the stories is consistent with the individual's political or social identity. Here, we test a novel intervention to reduce this effect by demonstrating participants' own bias to them. Participants (n = 1026) were asked to indicate their political affiliation (Democrat or Republican) and then randomly assigned to the intervention or to a control condition. They were then exposed to true and false news items on the topic of U.S. politics. Participants in the intervention condition reported fewer false memories overall, and fewer ideologically congruent memories in particular. The effect was somewhat stronger among those who experienced their own bias during the intervention but was effective even among those who did not. We conclude that this simple and easily scalable intervention can markedly reduce cognitive biases in response to misinformation.