Pictures Are Not Always Worth a Thousand Words: Nonprobative Pictures Did Not Increase the Effectiveness of Misinformation Corrections
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2025-01-01
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Much research has focused on the language used for debunking false beliefs: communications should lead with facts, label misinformation as false, and reinforce true information. Pictures are used in debunking messages, but it remains unclear whether they matter, and what content they should depict. Six experiments explored these issues, focusing on correcting science misconceptions. There were no effects of nonprobative pictures on correcting misinformation beyond the effects of corrective text alone. This was true regardless of whether the image depicted the misconception (Experiments 1, 3–6) or the correct referent (Experiments 2, 3, 5, 6), whether a symbol reinforcing truth or falseness (red X or green checkmark) accompanied the image (Experiments 1–6), whether belief was assessed immediately or after a delay (Experiments 4–6), and in an exploratory last experiment, whether belief in real-world health issues was targeted. Simple messages yielded robust correction, but nonprobative pictorial aids did not increase their potency.
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Whitehead, PS, CP Davis, JS Park and EJ Marsh (2025). Pictures Are Not Always Worth a Thousand Words: Nonprobative Pictures Did Not Increase the Effectiveness of Misinformation Corrections. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. 10.1037/mac0000214 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/32358.
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Charles Davis
Charles works on a range of topics in cognitive science, covering semantic memory, language, and embodied cognition. He is particularly interested in how sensory-perceptual experiences and language experience contribute to semantic knowledge, or, what kids know about word meanings.
Elizabeth J. Marsh
Why do people sometimes erroneously think that Toronto is the capital of Canada or that raindrops are teardrop-shaped? How is it that a word or fact can be “just out of reach” and unavailable? What changes, if anything, when you read a novel or watch a movie that contradicts real life? Have you ever listened to a conversation only to realize that the speaker is telling your story as if it were their own personal memory? Why do some listeners fail to notice when a politician makes a blatantly incorrect statement? These questions may seem disparate on the surface, but they are related problems, and reflect my broad interests in learning and memory, and the processes that make memory accurate in some cases but erroneous in others. This work is strongly rooted in Cognitive Psychology, but also intersects with Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Education.
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