Fig. 1

Schematic of the Procedure: Experiments 1 and 2. A schematic overview of the trial structures from the procedures in both experiments. The main difference between experiments was the trial structure in Phase 1: In Experiment 1, participants rated the familiarity and believability of headlines; In Experiment 2, participants rated the believability of each headline, which displayed the number of fictional peers who believed and disbelieved the headline. The majority of peers believed the headline in the Peers-Believe condition, and the minority of peers believed the headline in the Peers-Disbelieve condition. Phase 2 included Correction headlines that corrected fake news from Phase 1 (red borders), Repetition headlines that repeated real news from Phase 1 (green borders), and Control headlines that only appeared Phase 2 (blue borders). Note that all the trials in the Peers-Believe and Peers-Disbelieve conditions were later corrected, whereas that Phase 1 trials in the Repetition condition always included a negligible difference in peer beliefs. In both experiments, during Phase 2, participants indicated when they detected headlines that contradicted fake news, and if so, attempted to recall fake news from Phase 1. In the first slide of Phase 2 trials, the yellow highlights for the “Yes” and “No” judgments indicate the correct classification of each headline type upon which the second slide was contingent. During Phase 3, participants first recalled Phase 2 real news details, then indicated those for which fake news was corrected in Phase 2, and for those, attempted to recall the Phase 1 fake news