Failure to accept retractions: A contribution to the continued influence effect

Previous research has shown that when information about a narrative event is retracted, people continue to use that information even though it has been explicitly identified as incorrect. Not only can this occur for implicitly inferred information, but also when the change is stated explicitly. The current study explored whether this effect reflects, at least in part, an unwillingness of some readers to accept changes to their understanding. Experiment 1 assessed this using a continued influence effect paradigm with an additional probe asking whether participants believed the explicitly stated change. Most did not. Those that did accept it showed evidence of a reduced use of the incorrect information, while those that did not accept it performed similarly to those who received no correction (control). Experiment 2 included an additional explicit instruction that participants could say "don't know" if they were unsure of how to respond. The pattern of results was largely the same as for Experiment 1. Experiment 3 modified the alternative account to increase plausibility, and added two additional stories/question sets to ensure effects were not limited to one set of materials. A greater number of participants found the retractions believable than in Experiments 1 and 2. Nonetheless, a similar pattern of results was found. Overall, these findings suggest that at least some of the evidence for the continued use of retracted information may be due to some people not accepting the retraction, even in the absence of external motivation to disregard it.