Psychological Tribes and Processes: Understanding Why and How Misinformation Persists

Under certain conditions, attempting to correct misinformation ironically result in its strengthening. In the current integrative review, I draw upon cognitive, motivational, and social psychology and political science literatures to examine instances of correction failure that are due to individuals’ intentional rejection of attempted corrections, which I refer to as intentional correction resistance. The review highlighted that when individuals are faced with corrections that target misconceptions that are closely associated with individual and group identity, identity-protective motivation may explain why intentional correction resistance occurs. Further, the review also identified several mechanisms that may explain how this phenomenon occurs, including validation, distrust, inhibition failure, disfluency, threat appraisal, negative moral emotions, motivated reasoning, and reactance. By sketching out potential antecedents and consequences of this costly phenomenon, I hope that researchers and educators may have a more complete theoretical picture with which to enhance the effectiveness of corrective efforts.