Need for cognition and discrepancy detection in the misinformation effect

Need for Cognition (NFC) was explored in the misinformation effect paradigm where participants view an event and receive post-event information that contains false information. The misinformation often leads to decreased memory accuracy and incorporation of the misinformation into the original event memory. The present study sought to determine whether high-NFC individuals would be more likely to detect discrepancies between the original event and the misinformation, making them less susceptible to the influence of misinformation. This was hypothesised because high-NFC individuals should be more likely to engage in effortful processing that could be used to carefully monitor the source of misinformation and detect discrepancies in order to avoid false memories. Further, when presented with misinformation, high-NFC individuals had more accurate memories and accepted less misinformation than low-NFC individuals. The results suggest that high-NFC individuals are less susceptible to misinformation suggesting they might be more likely to engage in discrepancy detection.