Processing political misinformation - comprehending the Trump phenomenon

A new study led by an international team of scientists has investigated how people evaluate whether information is true or false, and how this evaluation is affected by source credibility. For the purposes of the study, published today in Royal Society Open Science, participants rated their belief in statements from the campaign trail of Donald Trump— described by many as perhaps the most polarising political figure of recent times. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky from the School of Experimental Psychology and the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol was one of the researchers who led the project. He said: "Individuals have limited time to comprehend complex topics and people may use perceived credibility of political figures as a shortcut when evaluating whether information is true or false. "Even in ideal circumstances false information continues to influence memory and reasoning even after credible corrections. We focused upon the impact of source credibility on the assessment of information veracity, and the extent that false information could be corrected." Using statements from the campaign trail of Donald Trump, participants rated their belief in statements either directly attributed to Trump ("the MMR vaccine causes autism") or unattributed statements ("vaccines cause autism - how much do you believe this statement to be true"). After rating the extent to which they believed each item on a 0-10 scale, participants received an explanation as to whether the items were true or false.