Does wording matter? Examining the effect of phrasing on memory for negated political fact-checks

After encountering negated messages, people may remember the core claim while forgetting the negative evaluation. These memory errors are of particular concern for fact checks on social media, which often use brief affirmations or negations to help the public learn the truth behind questionable claims. Across three experiments, we examined whether these memory errors could be minimized by placing evaluations before the entire claim is stated (e.g., “No, X did not do Y, as A claims”), rather than after (e.g., “A claims X did Y. No, this is false”). Participants remembered whether fact-checked political claims were affirmed or negated immediately (Experiment 1) and one week later (Experiment 2). While participants began to forget these fact-checks after three weeks, this forgetting was similar for before- and after-claim evaluations, contrary to our predictions (Experiment 3). These results suggest that there are multiple, equally memorable formats for communicating affirmations and negations.