Continued influence effect

The reports that are frequently shown concerning breaking news and events may result in the presentation of information that is not based on fact. Such statements must be rectified in order to change people's perceptions. In most circumstances, the damage is considerable, and withdrawing the remark will have little effect. Several studies have been undertaken in the past, and the research indicates that the corrections made have not been effective in reversing the problems caused by the initial disinformation. Many people draw conclusions based on discredited information rather than conducting investigation. New stories frequently arise to show that someone is to blame for the negative consequence. An experiment will be conducted based on a story reported in media to determine the factors that are significant in influencing the effect. Potential reasons will be derived to determine why misinformation, the memory and judgements are difficult to correct.

Keywords: memory, continued influence, judgments, misinformation, correction.

























Nature and Determinants of Continued Influence Effect

Introduction

Continued influence effect is a situation where an individual makes a statement only to realize later that the claims are false. The folk can retract the statement but society will not lose the memories that came as a result of the misinformation. It influences the perceptions of the people as people learn facts about an event that they later recognize it to be unfounded. The information discredited, influences our reasoning while we try to understand the corrections that have been made. The effects are disheartening among those who think that the initial step in arguing with those who have based their beliefs on the misinformation is by analyzing the views of the opponents. The society we live at the moment, by correcting errors, is pointless to many who are getting facts right is the solution to the problem (Chrobak & Zaragoza 2008). It prevents people from interferences that are faulty and prevent people from behaving in a manner that could bring harm. Getting the facts right, for instance, about the effects of environmental degradation would be a first step in guiding the society to implement reasonable actions.

Background of the study.

Johnson and Seifert disputed the facts that giving a logical alternative that is causal rather than invalidate misinformation, alleviates the continued influence effect. There may be facts that are right about many beliefs but providing a causal alternative to astrologers and defendants has not had much effect to the true believers. Religion and its beliefs are impenetrable to the facts and they have always contracted them. The change to the perceptions can occur outside of direct arguments with opponents (Jaschinski, & Wentura 2002). It is difficult to ask people to forget information that has earlier had an impact in the lives. In the political scene, for example, the politicians utter words that leave a bitter memory on the opponents. Technology has made it easier for people to share information across the globe. Such utterances will always come back to haunt them even after long periods. It is essential to guard our views and thoughts before letting them out to the public. There will be less room for error and arguments and the world will be peaceful for everyone.

The aim of the research.

The probe was conducted to provide information that will give answers to the problems addressed in the exploration. The dependent and independent variable are both used in the study. The aims are highlighted below.

To determine if replacing the misinformation at retraction reduces the continued influence effect.

To establish if the retrieval task of the misinformation influences the strength of the continued influence effect.

To find out if the memory capacity of a person has an impact on the strength of the continued influence effect.

The objective is to give a clear analysis through experiments and procedures that are designed to give accurate information about the occurrence of an event. It will also elaborate on the rationale of the hypothesis and the statistical analysis that will be used in testing them.

The Design of the Experiments and the Procedures to be followed.

Three experiments carried out to determine the effect of replacing and retracting misinformation has an impact in the continued stress effect. The last probe will determine the relationship between the memory capacity and the effect.



The experiment

It is a research about the misinformation that occurs as a result of drowning of an eight-year-old boy in a swimming pool at a school. The blame is on the negligence of teachers while handling the students. The teachers, however, made statements claiming that the child was rebellious and the facility prohibits the students from accessing the site without supervision of an adult. Considering the pain and loss of a child, the teachers soon learn that the information was not considerate to the grieving families. They soon retracted the statements but the impact and influence on the public perception is already significant. They belief that the institution does not put the interest of the families and the children as a priority and that other factors such as money could be the source of motivation.

Aim one

Replacing the misinformation at retraction does not reduce the continued influence effect. The perceptions of the people are already changed and convincing them to develop a level of trust is an impossible mission. People should be cautious about how they pass information and have in mind the consequences of the outcome.

Aim two

Retrieval task of the misinformation influences the strength of the continued influence effect. The damage of the child dying from drowning has already occurred and the statements raised by the teachers are disturbing to the public. Retrieving such statements will not help the perception of the public as the mind is already biased to the institution. They should aim to be cautious and make informed choices that will have a positive impact to the society.

Aim three

The memory capacity of a person has an impact on the strength of the continued influence effect. If people have a high memory capacity they will tend to remember the series of events that have occurred in the past. Their memories help those who can’t remember to reflect on the statements raised. The memories, therefore, increase the continued influence effect.

To determine the rationale of the hypothesis six conditions were used. The retraction types were four. Retraction only, retraction alternative, faulty fuel tank, retraction alternative (2). A series of trials were then carried out to form an arithmetic statement.

 

Retraction type

 

 

Retrieval Task

 

 

 

 

Retraction-only

retraction-alternative 1

Retraction alternative 2

free recall

C6

C5

C1

Recognition

C2

C2

C3



Table 1: The six conditions from retrieval task. (Johnson & Seifert, 1994).

The impetus from the experiment above is that new stories may not always give misinformation explicitly, instead it can merely imply that a certain factor may be the cause of an adverse outcome. According to Seifert, the people are influenced by what they hear and will react to the sentiments immediately. The claims can be proved by his argument about the story on a television channel that highlighted about the death of four family members after consuming meals in a local Chinese restaurant. Days later the same media house reports that the deaths were as a result of faulty furnace. The Chinese restaurant was however closed down because the suspicion among people had already increased and not a single person was willing to consume the products. The conclusions derived is that the family members died from severe poisoning as a result of consuming the food form the restaurant.

Determinants of the continued stress effect

Many theories have been argued about the causes of the continued stress effect. Some argue that repeating false information helps the people to remember about the occurrence of an event. In the present, there are many caused by technology, for example, plays a significant role to spreading information. Much of the information available on the internet is shared globally. The users have an option to repost for the second time the information that has been presented by a single user (Enhancing eyewitness testimony 330). People will therefore have to read a single post one to five times depending on how many people share the content on their platform. The sharing of the information allows them to have repeated memories and it influences their thoughts as it is a constant reminder.

Misinformation that is presented in the form of new stories can influence the beliefs of the people. It also affects their reasoning and the impressions about the cause of events that are newsworthy. The primary goal of the probe was to seek information that will draw conclusions that corrections are less effective when the misinformation has been completely implied by the individual. Previous research that has been conducted by various scholars suggest that the consequences of the misleading information in the headlines are adverse and the damages experienced by the party referred to are huge. The experiment above suggests that implied misinformation is very resistant to correction as opposed to the information that is provided explicitly. The resistance from the public is greater future findings will however need to be replicated (Ecker et al., 2011). The findings obtained were from a single news story about a baby drowning that contained one evidence of misinformation.

The internet is contributing significantly to misinformation as the authors and popular bloggers seek information to generate traffic to their websites. In the United States, a significant portion of the population uses the internet on a daily basis. Scholars have argued about the repercussion of the utilization and the increase in hate speech and racial discrimination. Such issues hurt the citizens especially in the United States where the majority of the people are foreigners. The abuse in the use of the internet through hate speech by politician is triggering wars that affect the national security. The opinions of the people about the confidence level they have on the government has declined significantly. They have a perception that the mandate of the government is to ensure they monitor any malicious activity that may cause war to erupt. The issue raises a logical question, for example, who is responsible for prosecuting politicians that utter abusive messages and soon retract them to seek popularity and sympathy from the voters (Zwaan, & Radvansky 1998). They should define circumstances that may result in a violation of the law and those that, in which if overstated, the government can initiate a legal action against the person

People are more cautious about their actions at the present because technology exist and utterances made voluntary or in negligence can both be prosecuted. The media plays a pivotal role in informing the public about the occurrence of the events that occur on a global scale. It should be cautious not to report to the public before obtaining crucial evidence that supports the report. People have got different opinions about what they consider right and wrong. In most circumstances, the media houses engage in war fare and competition as they struggle to be the first to report on the issues with security. Such information should be evaluated to determine the effect it will have on the people (Unsworth, & Engle 2005). Many effects have occurred as a result of the media reporting on information that is untrue. We should be civil as the behavior contributes to the quality of life and when it is higher people are likely to be relaxed.

The rate of resistance to change in attitude of information that has been retracted is high. People always belief that when forgiveness is granted repeatedly there is less room for change. According to their views those who make mistakes should be punished severely and used as lesson to teach the society about the implications of utterances that threatened the security of a nation. The damages incurred are large and resources have to spend to change the outcome (Unsworth, & Engle 2005). In some situations, the impact is difficult to reverse. The people should however be relaxed to situations and give room for people to reform.

Conclusion

The news reports have always been released before the reports are evaluated. It is the reason the facts from the findings are mistaken. In the recent conducted elections in Kenya for instance, the presidential results were nullified because the relevant body that has a mandate to conduct the elections was streaming in the results without the reports. The mistakes could be explicit statements but the damages are significant. The implied notion by those supporting the opposition is that the body managing the elections had collaborated with the president declared to increase their numbers to obtain an outcome that will make them win the election. Although the participants in such cases are implied and misinformation that emanates from explicit conditions of the current explorations will often receive a similarity on the stories. Mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure that society is civil and they know and follow the right procedure to avoid future damages.





References

Chrobak, Q.M. & Zaragoza, M.S. (2008). Inventing stories: Forcing witnesses to fabricate entire fictitious events leads to freely reported false memories. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15(6), 1190-1195.

Ecker, U.K.H., Lewandowsky, S., Swire, B., & Chang (2011). Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(3), 570-578.

Jaschinski, U. & Wentura, D. (2002). Misleading postevent information and working memory capacity: An individual differences approach to eyewitness memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16, 223-231.

Ecker, U.K.H., Lewandowsky, S., & Apai, J. (2011). Terrorists brought down the plane! – No, actually it was a technical fault: Processing corrections of emotive information. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(2), 283-310.

Johnson, H.M. & Seifert, C.M. (1994). Sources of the continued influence effect: When misinformation in memory affects later inferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 20(6), 1420-1436.

Text book pp. 328-330. Enhancing eyewitness testimony.

Unsworth, N, & Engle, R.W. (2005). Working memory capacity and fluid abilities: Examining the correlation between Operation Span and Raven. Intelligence, 33, 67-81.

Zwaan, R.A. & Radvansky, G.A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123(2), 162-185.

















































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