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Countering misinformation can reduce belief in the moment, but corrective messages quickly fade from memory. We tested whether the longer-term impact of fact-checks depends on when people receive them. In two experiments (total N = 2,683), participants read true and false headlines taken from social media. In the treatment conditions, “true” and “false” tags appeared before, during, or after participants read each headline. Participants in a control condition received no information about veracity. One week later, participants in all conditions rated the same headlines’ accuracy. Providing fact-checks after headlines ( debunking ) improved subsequent truth discernment more than providing the same information during ( labeling ) or before ( prebunking ) exposure. This finding informs the cognitive science of belief revision and has practical implications for social media platform designers.
Brashier et al. (Mon,) studied this question.