Psychology Today
Misinformation has become an epidemic in the Internet age. It undermines interpersonal trust, acerbates political polarization, threatens social order, and creates fear and uncertainty. The damaging effects are immense for individuals, communities, and society as a whole.

To some extent, for misinformation to “get to us,” we have to “take it in.” Yet not all misinformation is equally persuasive and thus effective in producing false beliefs and false memories. Research has shown that many factors, such as the emotional tone and logical coherence of a news report, influence how people perceive the truthfulness of its information.

In a recent study from my lab, we looked into the role of information centrality in creating false memory. Central information concerns the key elements of an event, such as who were the protagonists and what happened to them (e.g., Angie gave money to a street guitar player). Peripheral information, in contrast, concerns the surrounding contextual details outside the main course of the event (e.g., there were people walking on the street). Given that central information directly defines the event’s meaning, information deviating from it, namely central misinformation (e.g., the guy was playing violin on the street), would be less likely to be accepted as truthful than peripheral misinformation (e.g., there was a group of runners nearby).

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