Watch for
Old debunked claims surfacing in your current reasoning.
Belief & ConfidenceBias #113
Continued Influence Effect
Misinformation lingers even after correction.
The tendency to continue relying on misinformation in reasoning even after it has been explicitly corrected and debunked.
Why it matters: Critical in understanding why fact-checking has limited effectiveness.
Try this
Actively replace misinformation in your mental model rather than just marking it as false.
Real-world example
Continuing to believe a retracted news story when evaluating related information.
Key researchers
Stephan Lewandowsky
First described in 2008
Psychological mechanism
Memory updating failure. Correcting involves deleting or overwriting an existing memory trace. The original trace persists and can still be retrieved even when a correction tag is attached.
Seminal research
Hollyn M. Johnson and Colleen M. Seifert (1994), "Sources of the continued influence effect: When misinformation in memory affects later inferences."
Related Biases
Below is a realistic scenario. Read it, then choose what you would do. The feedback will show whether a cognitive bias influenced your choice — not to judge, but to reveal the pattern in action.
Thought Experiment
This experiment places you in a realistic decision. Your instinctive choice will reveal whether bias is at work.
STEP 1 → ReadSTEP 2 → ChooseSTEP 3 → Reveal
Debrief
The continued influence effect shows that correction is not deletion. The old misinformation persists alongside the correction and can still influence reasoning. This is why simple fact-checking is often insufficient — you need to replace the false narrative with a compelling alternative.