The Continuing Effect Of High-related Misinformation In The Elderly And Its Influencing Factors

The continued influence effect(CIE)of misinformation refers to the tendency of people to believe the authenticity or correctness of the original misinformation with the later correction of the misinformation,and the misinformation still has a lasting effect on people's memory and reasoning processes.Fictional reports and fictional news were mostly used as materials in previous studies.Recently,a few of the studies used scientific knowledge as experimental materials,which enhanced their relevance to our real life.However,it is still not easy for normal people connecting themselves with the materials.At the same time,the majority of participants recruited in studies were young people.So far,there are only two studies recruited the elderly as participants,which only focus on the exist of the phenomenon,and lack of discussion on correction and affecting factors of misinformation.The present study intended to investigate the influence of information relevancy on the continued influence effect of misinformation in the elderly and its affecting factors by using the paradigm of CIE of misinformation.Sub study 1 of study 1 used the materials from studies on the CIE of misinformation(taking scientific knowledge as an example)to investigate the cultural universality of CIE of misinformation in the elderly.Sub study 2 of study 1 took self-designed as materials to explore the information content's universality of the CIE of misinformation in the elderly.The materials included information highly related to the elderly(e.g.,health care knowledge).Sub study 1 of study 2 manipulated information revevancy to investigate its influence on the CIE of misinformation in the elderly.Sub study 2 of study 2 investigated the influence of information relevancy on the CIE of misinformation in young people,in order to exclude a possible contamination from the material familiarity to the results.On the basis of study 1 and 2,Sub study 1 of study 3 further discussed the relationship between working memory capacity and the CIE of high-relevancy misinformation in the elderly.Sub study 2 of study 3 explored the relationship between individuals' innate attitude on the CIE of high-relevancy misinformation in the elderly.Study 1,using the materials either from the previous researchs or designed by author,observed there existed the CIE of misinformation in the elderly,indicating a cultural and information types universality of the CIE of misinformation.Sub study 1 of study 2 found that the CIE of misinformation was larger for the high-relevanyc information in the olders.Sub study2 of study 2 found that the CIE of misinformation was larger for the high-relevanyc information in the youngers,which excluded a possible contamination from material familiarity on the experimental results,and indicated that information correlation did have an effect on the CIE of misinformation.In addition,the correction method had an effect on the correction effect of misinformation.The complex correction attanuted the CIE of misinformation better than thesimple correction.In other words,compared to under the condition of simple correction,the elderly had a significantly lower dependence on the misinformation under the condition of complex correction,and the CIE of misinformation was smaller.Finally,for the high-relevancy information,the CIE of misinformation in the elderly was influenced by both working memory ability and cognitive attitude.The results of this study offered important cues for the elderly to weaken the CIE of misinformation in the real life.