Misinformation as an Event Model Problem

Why does misinformation often continue to influence reasoning even after it has been explicitly corrected? Dominant accounts in misinformation research treat this persistence as a failure of belief updating, emphasizing propositional acceptance, motivational resistance, or memory decay. We argue that this framing overlooks a fundamental constraint on comprehension: misinformation is typically encountered as part of a temporally unfolding narrative and is therefore integrated into event-structured mental models. Drawing on research in event cognition and narrative comprehension, we propose that misinformation often acquires a causal role within an event representation, supporting prediction, explanation, and inference. Corrections that merely negate false information remove a causal element without restoring model completeness, yielding incoherent event models that invite compensatory inference and the reinstatement of misinformation over time. By contrast, corrections that align with event boundaries and provide causally adequate replacements are more likely to stabilize updated representations. This event-model perspective offers a unifying explanation for continued influence effects, delayed resurgence of misinformation, and inference-based false memory, and it suggests that effective interventions must aim not only to change beliefs but to complete narrative event models. We conclude that misinformation research must move beyond propositional frameworks and treat narrative event structure as a central cognitive constraint on belief and correction. notReviewed other