Robustness tests provide further support for an ecological account of the truth and fake news by repetition effects
Corneille et al. (2020) found that repetition increases judgments that statements have been used as fake news on social media, a result that is consistent with an ecological theorization. They also found that repetition increases truth judgments and decreases falsehood judgments (i.e., two instantiations of the Truth-by-Repetition effect), which is more compatible with the ecological account than with competing accounts. However, the first author of the present article found unsuspected programming issues in Corneille et al.’s experiments. These programming issues introduced confounds that may have been responsible for the results. To estimate whether Corneille et al.’s results and main claims hold when correcting these issues, the current team agreed on two high-powered preregistered replications of Corneille et al.’s experiments (N total = 540). The findings strongly support Corneille et al.’s predictions, which substantiates and generalizes an ecological account of repetition effects on judgment.