Interest Versus Accuracy: Reducing the Deleterious Effects of Reading Inaccurate Information

• In Event: What We Read and How We Understand: Text Structure, Comprehension, and Spatial Reasoning

Abstract

People are routinely exposed to inaccurate claims and ideas. Research has demonstrated that brief exposures to inaccuracies, even when conveying patently false ideas, can affect people’s subsequent decisions and judgments. In two experiments we tested whether evaluative mindsets reduce people’s use of inaccurate ideas and encourage reliance on more accurate understandings. Participants instructed to engage in deliberate evaluation of potentially inaccurate statements reproduced fewer inaccurate ideas and produced more correct answers to post-reading questions than did participants who rated their interest in the statements. Evaluative benefits even seemed to spill over to statements that only required interest ratings. The current results demonstrate the benefits of evaluative mindsets, helping to identify conditions that reduce the problematic effects of exposures to inaccuracies.

Authors

• Nikita Antonia Salovich, Northwestern University

• David Rapp, Northwestern University