Misinformation-defined as information that is initially assumed to be valid but is later corrected or retracted-often has an ongoing effect on people's memory and reasoning. We tested the hypotheses that (a) reliance on misinformation is affected by people's preexisting attitudes and (b) attitudes determine the effectiveness of retractions. In two experiments, participants scoring higher and lo...

There has been a steady increase in the amount of information published on the internet in the past ten years. In the healthcare domain, patients are increasingly exchanging medical information on online social networks and engaging in self care as a result. This trend has concerned many researchers who have studied and confirmed the existence of misinformation on the internet. This research is...

This article introduces a special volume on misinformation about child sexual abuse. Despite extensive research findings on the long-term effects and consequences of child sexual abuse, misinformation on this topic is widespread. Several forces have worked to support and disseminate this erroneous information. Because it is difficult to comprehend the horror of sexual crimes against children, s...

Astroturfing Astroturfing is the campaign that masks its supporters and sponsors to make it appear to be launched by grassroots participants. Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a group of people. Internet services facilitate the process by connecting customers and crowdsourcing workers. Ground truth Ground ...

We study the tradeoff between user engagement and misinformation faced by an online social networking platform. The content available on the platform is possibly erroneous. Agents decide whether to engage with the content based on their direct satisfaction from engaging, the disutility from engaging with erroneous content, and the positive externality that they derive from engaging with the sam...

Although retrieval practice typically enhances memory retention, it can also impair subsequent eyewitness memory accuracy (Chan, Thomas, & Bulevich, 2009). Specifically, participants who had taken an initial test about a witnessed event were more likely than nontested participants to recall subsequently encountered misinformation—an effect we called retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES). Here...

BACKGROUND Use of dietary supplements is common among people living with HIV/AIDS. Because dietary supplements are used in the context of other health behaviors, they may have direct and indirect health benefits. However, supplements may also be associated with vulnerability to medical misinformation and unfounded health claims. We examined use of dietary supplements among people living with HI...

Social media are pervaded by unsubstantiated or untruthful rumors, that contribute to the alarming phenomenon of misinformation. The widespread presence of a heterogeneous mass of information sources may affect the mechanisms behind the formation of public opinion. Such a scenario is a florid environment for digital wildfires when combined with functional illiteracy, information overload, and c...