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Published on: September 28, 2018
Metacognitive Monitoring of Political Facts: Effects of Political Knowledge, Political Orientation, and Cognitive
Erika K Fulton1, Alicyn E Ager1, Erin Madison2
1Department of Psychology, Idaho State University.
Abstract:
[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 32(1) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied (see record 2027-40760-001). The title was incorrectly published as "Metacognitive Monitoring of Political Facts: Effects of Political, Orientation and Knowledge and Cognitive Style." The byline appears as "Metacognitive Monitoring of Political Facts: Effects On" and has been corrected to "Me] Accurate metacognition is essential to informed political decisions and preventing the spread of misinformation, but research on metacognitive monitoring of political facts, outside of misinformation studies, has not met metacognitive research measurement standards. We addressed this limitation and assessed potential factors (political knowledge, political orientation, and cognitive style) related to this type of metacognitive monitoring accuracy. A sample of 216 Amazon Mechanical Turk participants completed measures of political orientation, political knowledge, and cognitive style, along with a test of political metacognitive monitoring accuracy, between February 2021 and March 2022. Participants were generally overconfident in their political knowledge, especially those with less political knowledge and who were more conservative, with conservatives also showing worse relative metacognitive accuracy. Cognitive style partially explained differences due to political orientation. Our participants were U.S. residents and disproportionately White, male, and lower-to-middle income, so studies of other samples and political contexts are needed for generalizability. Results also build on cue theory, showing that political knowledge and political orientation can act as metacognitive judgment cues. The study highlights the need to improve political metacognitive monitoring accuracy and reveals three targets for intervention: political knowledge, political orientation, and cognitive style. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
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