Continued Influence of Misinformation and the Information Disorder

The Internet has made it easier than ever to produce and consume misinformation, contributing to the pollution of the information environment—also referred to as the “information disorder.” One particularly pernicious aspect of misinformation is that it often influences individuals’ reasoning and decision-making even after clear corrections. This lingering influence is known as the continued influence effect and stems from a range of factors, including failures in memory integration and retrieval. This chapter provides a theoretical synthesis of the information-disorder and continued-influence literature, paying particular attention to the following three questions: (1) What individual and contextual factors exacerbate misinformation influence? (2) How can interventions address the information disorder? (3) What are some key methodological opportunities and challenges? To this end, the chapter presents a graphical-causal model of information disorder, aligns existing interventions along the model, and provides reasons for how psychological insights may reduce unwanted ancillary impacts and enhance intervention effectiveness.