Am I uncomfortable? It depends: The effect of gullibility and political conservatism on the continued influence of misinformation.

Correcting attitude consistent misinformation makes people feel uncomfortable. The more uncomfortable they feel after a correction, the more likely they are to ignore the new information they have learned and continue to endorse the original misinformation. We tested this effect and its boundaries in the context of climate change attitudes. We examined the effect of a second source of discomfort on continued misinformation endorsement, and explored the conditional effects of theoretically relevant individual differences including Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and measures of gullibility. Participants (N=787) completed an online survey including a measure of climate change attitudes, then read a vignette where climate change misinformation was presented and then corrected. Participants were randomly allocated to experience a second source of discomfort, or a control condition where no such source was included. After completing measures of RWA and gullibility, participants rated their discomfort after the misinformation was corrected, and their endorsement of the misinformation. As expected, climate change denial predicted stronger misinformation endorsement, an effect that was explained by increased discomfort post-correction. Both RWA and gullibility factors changed the strength of the association between climate change denial and discomfort. The implications of these findings for addressing anti-scientific beliefs will be discussed.