Recent controversies have emerged regarding false information in contemporary discourse. Research suggests that misinformation communicated implicitly is harder to correct than explicitly stated misinformation (the implicitness effect), but the mechanism has remained speculative. Prior research has proposed the failure to monitor (FTM) hypothesis, including the prediction that inadequate information retrieval may explain the implicitness effect. This study experimentally varied misinformation implicitness and correction strength, measuring outcomes including misinformation persistence (MP), attribution accessibility, and mental representations generated by participants. Results indicate the accessibility of misinformation-consistent attributions is associated with increased MP, but accessibility does not mediate the implicitness effect. In contrast, misintegration, a cognitive process that makes the misinformation consistent with corrections, moderates the implicitness effect. Analyses reveal several distinct mechanisms that predict misinformation persistence, including message characteristics, receiver ability to retrieve critical information, and the quality of receiver-generated inferences. Theoretical implications are discussed.
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