Closer Is Not Always More Credible: The Effect of Social Distance on Misinformation Processing

ABSTRACT Generally, people rely on source credibility to assess the truth of information and correct misinformation. This study aimed to investigate how social distance, a source characteristic, impacted the processing of misinformation. We conducted two studies to examine how social distance from the source of misinformation (Experiment 1) and corrective information (Experiment 2) influenced information processing. We found that misinformation was perceived as more truthful when provided by a close information source than by a distant information source. Moreover, the retraction of misinformation increased when the social distance of the retraction source decreased. Surprisingly, the social distance of the misinformation source provoked an unexpected reverse effect: misinformation from a close social distance source was easier to correct than that from a distant source.