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. 2023 Jan;13(1):e2815.
doi: 10.1002/brb3.2815. Epub 2022 Nov 30.

What makes us more susceptible to false memories in the era of COVID-19? A focus on vaccines and Green Pass

Chiara Scuotto  1 , Ciro Rosario Ilardi  1 , Gianpaolo Maggi  1 , Alfonso Ilardi  2 , Nadia Gamboz  3 , Maria Staiano  4 , Giovanni Borrelli  1 , Marco La Marra  4 , Raffaella Perrella  1
Affiliations

What makes us more susceptible to false memories in the era of COVID-19? A focus on vaccines and Green Pass

Chiara Scuotto et al. Brain Behav. 2023 Jan.

Abstract

Introduction: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was accompanied by an overabundance of fake news increasing the risk of developing false memories (FMs). Previous studies have shown that the relationship between fake news and FMs could be mediated by some individual variables, including attitudinal biases. We explored the role of these variables in true memories (TMs) and FMs formation, with special emphasis on vaccine- and Green Pass (GP)-related topics.

Method: We set up a large online survey exploring several constructs including media usage, attitude toward vaccines and GP, perceived (PK) and objective knowledge (OK) about COVID-19-related information, fear of the disease, depression and anxiety symptoms, coping mechanisms, and reasoning skills. Then, we asked participants whether they remembered certain news (true or fake), providing confidence ratings.

Results: Data from 289 respondents (198 females) from the general population were analyzed. Participants with positive attitude reported a greater fear that their loved ones contracted the COVID-19, a more frequent use of traditional media, and a higher PK when compared with respondents with negative attitude. On the whole sample, participants reported higher confidence levels when required to judge their memory of true than fake news; however, participants with positive attitude reported a higher confidence for both true and fake news. The relationship between attitude and TM confidence was mediated by the PK, whereas the relationship between attitude and FM confidence was probably affected by OK.

Conclusion: Attitude can modulate individual behaviors in the context of health issues. The PK and OK may interact with attitude in the memory formation.

Keywords: COVID-19; attitude; fake news; false memories.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Boxplots depicting differences between participants with negative (red boxes) and positive (green boxes) attitudes on true memory confidence (TMC) and false memory confidence (FMC) scores
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Scheme representing the mediation effect of objective knowledge in the relationship between general attitude and false memories confidence score controlling the effect of the other mediator (*p < .05)
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Scheme representing the mediation effect of perceived knowledge in the relationship between general attitude and true memories confidence score controlling the effect of the other mediators (*p < .05)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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