Addressing Mind-Wandering in Health Misinformation Interventions: Fact-Checking Across Immediate and Long-Term Effects

In the era of social media information, previous fact-checking studies have overlooked individual cognitive states such as mind-wandering, thereby limiting the generalizability of fact-checking findings in real-life scenarios. This study aims to examine the immediate and short-term effects of mind-wandering and fact-checking on interventions against health misinformation. Grounded in the dual processing model for online credibility assessments, this study used the within-subject experimental design ( N = 156) to manipulate the frequency of fact-checking exposures, assessed mind-wandering using thought probes during the task, and collected information accuracy scores immediately after the intervention and 1 week later as indicators of intervention effectiveness. The results showed that, in the immediate post-test, fact-checking exposure frequency had the significant positive effect on intervention effectiveness, and mind-wandering was negatively associated with intervention effectiveness. Nine exposures to fact-checking reduced the negative association between mind-wandering and intervention effectiveness. However, in the 1-week post-test, the effect of fact-checking exposure frequency was not significant, whereas mind-wandering remained negatively associated with intervention effectiveness. Nevertheless, nine exposures to fact-checking still reduced this short-term negative association. This study suggests that effective fact-checking interventions depend not only on repeated exposure to fact-checking information but also on individuals’ mind-wandering.