Mental imagery rather than a catalogue of facts: Why misinformation is a problem of event cognition

Why does misinformation sometimes continue to influence our thinking even long after it has been disproved? In psychological research, this phenomenon has so far generally been regarded as an incomplete update of knowledge in memory. In a new article in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, Prof. Dr. Markus Huff, Dr. Helen Fischer and Jan Pascal Göbel from the IWM’s Perception and Action lab propose a shift in perspective: they examine misinformation from the viewpoint of event cognition.

Event boundaries: How the brain divides information into scenes

Our minds do not experience the world as an endless stream of data, but automatically organise events into meaningful segments – much like individual scenes in a film. At the transitions between such scenes, known as event boundaries (such as changes of location, time or plot), the cognitive system concludes an episode and stores it in memory.

This influences how corrections are processed: if a correction reaches us whilst a scene is still unfolding, it can be incorporated immediately. If, however, it occurs only after an event boundary – when the episode has already been mentally archived – the brain must subsequently reopen the past scene, restructure it and re-evaluate it.

More than just facts: what lies within a mental scene

Within such a scene, memory does not store isolated individual statements, but constructs dynamic mental models of events. These models link several dimensions simultaneously: Who is acting? With what intentions and motives? Where, when and with what consequences?

A piece of misinformation often shapes the entire scenario model by attributing specific intentions to the actors. If only a single factual detail is corrected later on, the overarching model of the situation usually remains stable.

‘Event models are holistic simulations of an occurrence. Our cognitive system demands a self-contained episode. However, corrections often focus solely on isolated details. They remove a detail but leave the overarching model of the action untouched. A correction only has a lasting effect if it realigns the entire structure comprising temporal context, motives and actions,” explains Markus Huff.

Relevance for digital media formats

Using their theoretical framework, the research team combines basic research on perception and memory with research into disinformation. The approach provides new, testable predictions for future studies – particularly for online audiovisual media, in which information is primarily conveyed as dynamic narratives.

Markus Huff also explored the role of narratives in thinking and memory in his lecture as part of the Studium Generale programme at the University of Tübingen. Read the IWM News article ‘Why stories are persuasive’.