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Recent work on misinformation has indicated a role for social and group-based factors in shaping people's beliefs on factual matters, suggesting that communicators might be able to leverage social cues in messages aimed at promoting more accurate beliefs. To test this possibility, we conducted an online experiment (N = 605) to assess whether partisan in-group cues across several factual claims are effective in either promoting more accurate beliefs independently or in reinforcing the effect of fact-checking messages. Results reveal that while factual messages consistently promote accurate beliefs, partisan in-group cues have neither a direct effect in promoting greater belief accuracy nor moderate the influence of factual messages. We discuss the implications of the results for theory and offer some practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a field experiment conducted during the 2012 general elections in the U.S. Nyhan and Reifler found that the threat of fact-checking deterred state legislators from making false or misleading statements. The current study presents a conceptual replication and extension of this influential study by utilizing a similar treatment that leverages a recent partnership between local media outlets and fact-checking organizations, assessing the effects of the treatment on the accuracy of legislators' statements on Twitter around the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Results provide limited evidence of the effects of our treatment on the accuracy of legislators' posts, even among legislators within media markets directly affected by this partnership. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical relevance of these results and avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from established theoretical traditions in cognitive consistency, motivated reasoning, heuristic–systematic processing, and the anger-activism model, we extend existing work linking anger with misperceptions by specifying three distinct ways anger might contribute to the formation of misperceptions: Increasing reliance on partisan heuristics, influencing political information-seeking behavior, and moderating the influence of partisan media exposure. Analyzing data from an original survey administered nationally via Qualtrics Panels during the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump in January 2020, results indicate that high-anger partisans were more likely to express belief in claims supportive of their party and critical of the other party, regardless of the veracity of those claims. Further, anger was also linked with greater use of pro-attitudinal information sources and avoidance of counterattitudinal sources, with these differences in partisan media consumption subsequently influencing factual beliefs. However, we found no evidence that anger moderated the relationship between partisan media exposure and factual beliefs. We explore the implications of these findings in a political era defined increasingly by the experience of anger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]