Early reports of an unfolding news story sometimes contain incomplete or mistaken information that is later updated or corrected. Research shows that retracted information continues to influence beliefs and inferential reasoning in sometimes subtle ways. The present study sought to assess how the efficacy of corrections interacts with the passage of time. We assessed whether delaying a correction by 2 days, relative to providing the correction minutes after the mistaken information, influenced the efficacy of the correction. In the same experiments, we also assessed whether corrections lead to durable changes in belief, by assessing belief in the corrected information in the same individuals at several points in time. Although we found no evidence that correction timing mattered, we found clear evidence that corrected beliefs were not durable. In three experiments, belief in the mistaken information increased over the 2 days following a correction despite participants’ continued memory for the correction.

不断发展的新闻报道的早期报道有时包含不完整或错误的信息，这些信息随后会被更新或纠正。研究表明，收回的信息继续以有时微妙的方式影响信念和推论推理。本研究试图评估校正的效果如何与时间的流逝相互作用。我们评估了相对于在错误信息后提供校正分钟数而言，将校正延迟2天是否会影响校正效果。在同一实验中，我们还通过评估几个时间点同一个人对更正信息的信念，来评估更正是否会导致信念的持久变化。尽管我们没有发现改正时机很重要的证据，但我们发现了改正信念并不持久的明确证据。