Nadia Brashier

We live in a fake news era, where 26% of people visited untrustworthy sites ahead of the 2020 election. Misinformation harms public health, incites violence, and undermines democracy. Why do people believe that coronavirus is a bioweapon or that Biden stole the 2020 election? I study memory and judgment across the lifespan, with a focus on cognitive “shortcuts” people use to evaluate truth. My lab uses behavioral and neuroimaging tools to investigate why young and older adults fall for fake news.

• Brashier, N. M. (2024). Fighting fake news among the most vulnerable users. Current Opinion in Psychology, 57, 101813.
• Brashier, N. M. (2023). Do conspiracy theorists think too much or too little? Current Opinion in Psychology, 49, 101504.
• Brashier, N. M., Pennycook G., Berinsky, A. J., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Timing matters when correcting fake news. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118, e2020043118.
• Brashier, N. M., & Schacter, D. L. (2020). Aging in an era of fake news. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29, 316-323.
• Brashier, N. M., Eliseev, E. D., & Marsh, E. J. (2020). An initial accuracy focus prevents illusory truth. Cognition, 194, 104054.
• Brashier, N. M., & Marsh, E. J. (2020). Judging truth. Annual Review of Psychology, 71, 499-515.
• Brashier, N. M., Umanath, S., Cabeza, R., & Marsh, E. J. (2017). Competing cues: Older adults rely on knowledge in the face of fluency. Psychology and Aging, 32, 331–337.