Date of Graduation

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Psychological Science

Advisor/Mentor

Dr. Bill Levine

Committee Member

Dr. Kate Chapman

Second Committee Member

Dr. Amy Poe

Third Committee Member

Dr. Andrew Dowdle

Abstract

Quick! Do not think of a polar bear. Did you think of a white bear? As Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his 1863 essay “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions,” “[when tasked to not think of a polar bear] you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.” The consequence of negation without context (i.e., unlicensed negation; Levine & Hagaman, 2008) is what has come to be referred to as the “backfire effect,” a phenomenon where correcting misinformation strengthens belief in that information rather diminishing it (Ecker, et al., 2020). Fake news and misinformation in the media have been a growing issue in our society. Existing literature has pointed to conflicting evidence for whether the backfire effect happens at all. In part, this is due to a lack of approach unification. Our approach combines some of these methods in hopes of understanding the backfire effect. Since negation with or without context are both widely used methods to correct misinformation (e.g., Houts, 2024), it is imperative that we ensure they are effective. Our study’s goal is to use unlicensed negations to investigate the existence of an induced backfire effect and determine the effect’s size.

Keywords

Negation; Backfire Effect; Misinformation Correction; Linguistics; Memory

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