Correcting Misinformation in News Stories: An Investigation of Correction Timing and Correction Durability

Early reports of an unfolding news story sometimes contain incomplete or mistaken information that is later updated or corrected. Research shows that retracted information continues to influence beliefs and inferential reasoning in sometimes subtle ways. The present study sought to assess how the efficacy of corrections interacts with the passage of time. We assessed whether delaying a correction by 2 days, relative to providing the correction minutes after the mistaken information, influenced the efficacy of the correction. In the same experiments, we also assessed whether corrections lead to durable changes in belief, by assessing belief in the corrected information in the same individuals at several points in time. Although we found no evidence that correction timing mattered, we found clear evidence that corrected beliefs were not durable. In three experiments, belief in the mistaken information increased over the 2 days following a correction despite participants’ continued memory for the correction.