Data from: Processing political misinformation—comprehending the Trump phenomenon

This study investigated the cognitive processing of true and false political information. Specifically, it examined the impact of source credibility on the assessment of veracity when information comes from a polarizing source (Experiment 1), and effectiveness of explanations when they come from one’s own political party or an opposition party (Experiment 2). Participants rated their belief in factual and incorrect statements that Donald Trump made on the campaign trail; facts were subsequently affirmed and misinformation retracted. Participants then re-rated their belief immediately or after a delay. Experiment 1 found that (1) if information was attributed to Trump, Republican supporters of Trump believed it more than if it was presented without attribution, whereas the opposite was true for Democrats; and (2) although Trump supporters reduced their belief in misinformation items following a correction, they did not change their voting preferences. Experiment 2 revealed that the explanation’s source had relatively little impact, and belief updating was more influenced by perceived credibility of the individual initially purporting the information. These findings suggest that people use political figures as a heuristic to guide evaluation of what is true or false, yet do not necessarily insist on veracity as a prerequisite for supporting political candidates.本研究围绕真伪政治信息的认知加工过程展开探究。具体而言，本研究包含两项实验：实验1考察了当信息来自极化来源时，来源可信度对信息真实性评估的影响；实验2则探究了当解释内容来自自身所属政党或反对政党时，解释的有效性对信息可信度判断的作用。实验中，参与者需对唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）在竞选活动中发表的真实与虚假言论的可信度进行评分；随后研究人员对其中的事实内容予以证实，对错误信息进行撤回。之后，参与者会立即或经过一段时间延迟后，再次对相关言论的可信度进行评分。实验1结果显示：其一，当信息被归因于特朗普时，支持特朗普的共和党选民对该信息的信任程度显著高于无来源标注的情况，而民主党选民则呈现出相反的趋势；其二，尽管特朗普的支持者在收到更正信息后，降低了对错误信息的信任度，但他们并未改变自身的投票偏好。实验2结果表明，解释内容的来源对可信度评估的影响相对有限，参与者的信念更新更多受到最初宣称该信息者的感知可信度影响。上述研究结果提示，人们会将政治人物作为评估信息真伪的启发式线索，但在支持政治候选人时，并不必然将信息真实性作为先决条件。