Dustin Carnahan and I have a new paper out in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research that uses a pair of experiments to assess how judgment processing strategies influence individuals’ response to corrections. We find that on-line processing is associated with less bias when updating beliefs in response to corrections than memory-based processing. The article doi is 10.1093/ijpor/edz037

The limited influence of corrective messages is one of the most striking observations in the misperceptions literature. We elaborate on this well-known outcome, showing that correction effectiveness varies according to recipients’ judgment strategy. Using data from two online experiments, we demonstrate that individuals’ responses to corrective messages are less biased by prior attitudes when they engage in on-line rather than memory-based processing. We also show that individuals are more responsive to one-sided messages under conditions of on-line rather than memory-based processing. Unexpectedly, two-sided messages, which repeat the inaccuracy before correcting it, performed better than one-sided messages among individuals using memory-based processes. These findings contribute to our understanding of fact-checking, and suggest strategies that could help promote greater responsiveness to corrective messages.