Why Retractions of Numerical Misinformation Fail: The Anchoring Effect of Inaccurate Numbers in the News

Numbers can convey critical information about political issues, yet statistics are sometimes cited incorrectly by political actors. Drawing on real-world examples of numerical misinformation, the current study provides a first test of the anchoring bias in the context of news consumption. Anchoring...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournalism & mass communication quarterly Vol. 99; no. 2; pp. 368 - 389
Main Authors Stubenvoll, Marlis, Matthes, Jörg
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2022
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Anchoring
Bias
Misinformation
News
News media
Numbers
Politics
Television news
numbers
immigration
experiment
anchoring
misinformation
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Summary:Numbers can convey critical information about political issues, yet statistics are sometimes cited incorrectly by political actors. Drawing on real-world examples of numerical misinformation, the current study provides a first test of the anchoring bias in the context of news consumption. Anchoring describes how evidently wrong and even irrelevant numbers might change people’s judgments. Results of a survey experiment with a sample of N = 413 citizens indicate that even when individuals see a retraction and distrust the presented misinformation, they stay biased toward the initially seen inaccurate number.
ISSN:1077-6990
2161-430X
DOI:10.1177/10776990211021800