We are more likely to trust claims made by people or organizations with names that are easy for us to pronounce. This is thought to be because easy to pronounce names are more easily processed, leading them to seem familiar and therefore credible. 

Credibility: Familiarity of names

Brandeis University

Arizona State University

The process of determining the accuracy of information. Often performed and published by professional fact checkers such as Politifact or Snopes.

Fact Checking

Schwarz, N., & Jalbert, M. (2021). When (Fake) News Feels True: Intuitions of truth and the acceptance and correction of misinformation. In R. Greifeneder, M. E. Jaffé, E. J. Newman, & N. Schwarz, The Psychology of Fake News: Accepting, Saring, and Correcting Misinformation. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429295379


When (Fake) News Feels True: Intuitions of truth and the acceptance and correction of misinformation

Software used to flag fake news, which is often detected either by independent fact-checkers or crowdsourcing algorithms because of the fact the manually flagging fake news can be difficult.

Fact Checking Flags

Criteria for Evaluating the Truth of a Message

The Schema-plus-tag model relates to fact checking because it posits the idea that people may forget the link between the negation of the fact check and the false claim it is debunking.

Schema-plus-tag Model and Fact Checking

Overall, fact-checking has been found to positively influence beliefs. Although, there are differences in effectiveness depending on the type of fact-checking message, pre-existing beliefs, and inclusion of visual elements. 

Effectiveness of Fact-Checking

Individuals often only share fact-checks online when they align with their political views or other pre-existing beliefs.

The Partisanship of Sharing Fact-Checks

Fact-checking is not scalable as it requires substantial time and effort, warnings are only put on blantly false news, and it often fails to reach the intended audience. 

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