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). These experiments were conducted prior to the 2016 Presidential election. Participants rated their belief in factual and incorrect statements that President 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 (i) 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 (ii) 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，实验1考察了当信息源自极化立场信源时，信源可信度对信息真实性评估的影响；实验2则探讨了当解释来自己方政党或反对党时，解释的有效性发挥的作用。所有实验均于2016年美国总统大选前完成。 实验流程为：被试先对特朗普在竞选活动中发表的事实性言论与虚假言论的可信度进行评分；后续研究人员对事实言论予以证实，对虚假信息进行辟谣。随后，被试将立即或经过一段延迟后，重新对自身的信任度评分进行重估。 实验1得到两项结果：其一，若信息被归因于特朗普，支持特朗普的共和党选民对其可信度的评分会高于无归因场景，而民主党选民则呈现相反趋势；其二，尽管特朗普支持者在收到更正信息后，会降低对虚假信息的信任度，但他们的投票偏好并未发生改变。 实验2结果显示，解释的信源对可信度评估的影响相对有限，个体的信念更新更多受最初提出该信息者的感知可信度所影响。 综上，本研究结果表明，人们会将政治人物作为评估信息真伪的启发式线索，但未必会将信息真实性作为支持政治候选人的前提条件。