Lisa Fazio

Associate Professor of Psychology and Human Development Vanderbilt University

  • Nashville TN

Expert on how people process true and false information, and how to mitigate the effects of reading and sharing false information.

Contact

Vanderbilt University

View more experts managed by Vanderbilt University

Spotlight

2 min

Repeatedly seeing headlines of wrongdoing reduces perception of moral offense

A study recently published in Psychological Science reveals that when people repeatedly encounter headlines about corporate wrongdoing, they view the wrongdoing as less unethical and are more likely to believe the headlines are true. Social media can cause scandalous news to go viral in an instant, and the resharing of provocative headlines ensures people repeatedly encounter these scandals. To test the effects of this repetition on moral judgement, researchers at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development and the London Business School sent text messages to study participants with news headlines about corporate misconduct. The study occurred over the course of 15 days as participants engaged in their daily routines. “We often think about social media and the current digital media landscape as increasing our anger and moral outrage, but in this case, repeated exposures to corporate wrongdoings actually made people slightly less outraged about the moral offense,” said Lisa Fazio, associate professor of psychology and human development. “When we repeatedly see news of the latest viral wrongdoing on social media, we often encounter it passively, at random times of the day, and while we might be distracted by other tasks. In our research, we show that even passing encounters can shape our thoughts and emotional reactions,” said Raunak Pillai, the study’s first author and a psychology doctoral student in Fazio’s Building Knowledge Lab. The researchers found that participants rated repeated headlines of wrongdoing as significantly less unethical than new headlines–a phenomenon known as the moral repetition effect–and that participants’ anger diminished when they encountered wrongdoings described in repeated headlines versus new headlines. The less anger they felt, the less unethical they judged the wrongdoing. Likewise, wrongdoings in repeated headlines verses new headlines were rated as less unusual, which also led to judging the wrongdoing as less unethical. That said, the effect size of repetition on moral judgement diminished as participants encountered more headlines; in other words, the effects were larger from the first to the second encounter as compared to the 15th to 16th encounter. As the number of repetitions increased, the effect on moral judgement became progressively smaller. Additionally, the more frequently participants viewed a headline, the truer they thought it was (known as the illusory-truth effect). After the initial views of headlines, participants’ truth ratings rose sharply and then plateaued, suggesting that the first few encounters with a headline have the most impact on peoples’ beliefs. The findings also suggest that perceptions of misconduct as true may elicit a more lenient moral judgment, but the authors say more research is needed to confirm this effect. “The more we hear about a wrongdoing, the more we may believe it—but the less we may care,” the authors write. Fazio and Pillai collaborated with Daniel Effron, Ph.D., from the London Business School on this study.

Lisa Fazio

1 min

Misinformation expert on YouTube ban on false information on vaccines

Lisa Fazio, associate professor of psychology and human development, is available for commentary on YouTube's ban on vaccine misinformation.  Lisa is an expert in misinformation and false news, studying how people learn, interpret and remember information. She can speak to YouTube's history as a vector for misinformation and other points related to the topic, including: The importance of finding trusted sources and how it's even harder than normal to tell what is a reliable source, especially as so many personal accounts are floating around Misinformation and mixed messages sent from politicians and government officials on vaccine implications The dangers of so many "experts" talking publicly about vaccines, particularly around the periphery of their expertise and the damage that has been done, particularly during the pandemic

Lisa Fazio

1 min

Ask an Expert: How can you recognize false information about the virus?

Lisa K. Fazio, assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, gives tips to social media consumers on how to recognize misleading information about COVID-19. For more information, read an essay about ways to identify misinformation written by Fazio for the Peabody Reflector. Vanderbilt University faculty are sharing their expertise on a range of topics related to COVID-19. Subscribe to Vanderbilt’s “Ask an Expert” series on YouTube to get the latest updates.

Lisa Fazio

Multimedia

Social Media

Biography

Lisa Fazio's research is focused on how the brain learns new information, and why our minds are susceptible to misinformation and lies.

Her research answers questions such as:
•How does the brain process information - both true and false?
•How can we prevent the sharing of false information online?
•How do people learn simple facts and more complex knowledge such as mathematical procedures?
•What can teachers and students do to improve learning within and outside the classroom?
•How do students learn incorrect information and how can those errors be corrected?

Her research informs basic theories about learning and memory, while also having clear applications for practitioners, such as journalists and teachers.

Areas of Expertise

How to prevent sharing false information online
Lies
Fake News
Developmental Science
Cognition
Cognitive Neuroscience
Learning & Memory
Development of mathematics understanding
The effects of giving and receiving feedback
Applying cognitive science to educational issues
Instability of general knowledge
How people learn true and false information
Why people believe false information
Fact checking
Memory

Accomplishments

Beyond the Ivory Tower 2020 Fellow

Lisa Fazio is among the latest cohort of fellows for the Beyond the Ivory Tower writing workshop, hosted by the Templeton Foundation and New York Times contributor James Ryerson.

Outstanding Presentation Award, Midwest Cognitive Science Conference

2018

frank Research Prize in Public Interest Communications

2017

Show All +

Education

Duke University

Ph.D.

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

2010

Washington University in St. Louis

B.A.

Department of Psychology

2004

Selected Media Appearances

Why Disasters Like Hurricanes Milton and Helene Unleash So Much Misinformation

Scientific American  online

2024-10-11

“You always see misinformation after disasters,” says Lisa Fazio, an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. “You don’t always see national political figures being the ones spreading that misinformation.”

View More

How to deal with misinformation about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump

Marketplace  radio

2024-07-18

FBI officials are still looking into what motivated the 20-year-old gunman who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Saturday.

Marketplace’s senior Washington correspondent, Kimberly Adams, speaks with Molly Dwyer, director of insights at PeakMetrics, and Lisa Fazio, associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, about the false narratives surrounding the shooting and how to separate fact from fiction in the aftermath of a violent event.

View More

From the ’60s till now, TV news coverage of large-scale university protests doesn’t look so different

The Conversation  online

2024-07-10

While much has changed over the past 50 years, evening television news remains a prominent source of information for Americans.

I am a scholar of psychology and study how people learn information from the world around them. I was struck by how the recent televised segments of college campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza brought to mind images from other student movements in the United States – particularly the widespread campus protests in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

View More

Show All +

Selected Articles

Pausing to consider why a headline is true or false can help reduce the sharing of false news

Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review

Lisa Fazio

2020-03-10

In an online experiment, participants who paused to explain why a headline was true or false indicated that they were less likely to share false information compared to control participants. Their intention to share accurate news stories was unchanged. These results indicate that adding “friction” (i.e., pausing to think) before sharing can improve the quality of information shared on social media.

View more

Repetition increases perceived truth equally for plausible and implausible statements

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Lisa K. Fazio & David G. Rand & Gordon Pennycook

2019-09-03

Repetition increases the likelihood that a statement will be judged as true. This illusory truth effect is well established; however, it has been argued that repetition will not affect belief in unambiguous statements. When individuals are faced with obviously true or false statements, repetition should have no impact. We report a simulation study and a preregistered experiment that investigate this idea. Contrary to many intuitions, our results suggest that belief in all statements is increased by repetition. The observed illusory truth effect is largest for ambiguous items, but this can be explained by the psychometric properties of the task, rather than
an underlying psychological mechanism that blocks the impact of repetition for implausible items. Our results indicate that the illusory truth effect is highly robust and occurs across all levels of plausibility. Therefore, even highly implausible statements will become more plausible with enough repetition.

View more

Retrieval-based learning in children

Current Directions in Psychological Science

Lisa K. Fazio and Elizabeth J. Marsh

2019-09-01

Testing oneself with flash cards, using a clicker to respond to a teacher’s questions, and teaching another student are all effective ways to learn information. These learning strategies work, in part, because they require the retrieval of information from memory, a process known to enhance later memory. However, little research has directly examined retrieval-based learning in children. We review the emerging literature on the benefits of retrieval-based learning for preschool and elementary school students and draw on other literatures for further insights. We reveal clear
evidence for the benefits of retrieval-based learning in children (starting in infancy). However, we know little about the developmental trajectory. Overall, the benefits are largest when the initial retrieval practice is effortful but successful.

View more

Show All +