Reading Medium and Epistemic Emotions in the Continued Influence Effect of Misinformation

It is well known that misinformation's effects on memory linger, referred to as the continued influence effect, even after reading corrections. However, it is uncertain how the reading medium and epistemic emotions (relevant to knowledge construction) relate to the continued influence effect. In this study, college students (N = 84) read about fictional news events, each with the first article stating misinformation and the second providing corrected updated information and then indicated their emotions experienced. This was a within-subjects experiment in that two events were read on paper and two on screen to compare effects of reading medium. There were no reliable differences in the continued misinformation effect by reading medium. However, the associations between epistemic emotions and misinformation ratings appeared to be more robust when reading from paper than screens. There were no reliable differences in epistemic emotions experienced by reading medium. The findings indicate that reading news online does not appear to relate to susceptibility of misinformation.