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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1417910
This article is part of the Research Topic Motivation-based Approaches to Countering Mass-Mediated Misinformation View all 6 articles

Using a Signal Detection Approach to Understand the Impacts of Processing Fluency and Efficacy on Accuracy in Misinformation Detection

Provisionally accepted
Kara S. Fort Kara S. Fort Hillary C. Shulman Hillary C. Shulman *
  • School of Communication, College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This experiment (N = 1019) examined how a state of processing fluency, induced through either an easy or difficult task (reading a simple vs. complex message or recalling few vs. many examples) impacted participants' ability to subsequently detect misinformation. The results revealed that, as intended, easier tasks led to higher reports of processing fluency. In turn, increased processing fluency was positively associated with internal efficacy. Finally, internal efficacy was positively related to misinformation detection using a signal detection task. This work suggests that feelings of ease while processing information can promote confidence and a more discerning style of information processing. Given the proliferation of misinformation online, an understanding of how metacognitions -like processing fluency -can disrupt the tacit acceptance of information carries important democratic and normative implications.

    Keywords: misinformation, metacognition, Information Processing, experimentation, Processing fluency, Signal detection

    Received: 15 Apr 2024; Accepted: 27 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Fort and Shulman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hillary C. Shulman, School of Communication, College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, 43210, Ohio, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.