Learning facts from fiction

Abstract

People’s knowledge about the world comes from many sources, including fictional ones such as movies and novels. In three experiments, we investigated how people learn and integrate information from fictional sources with their general world knowledge. Subjects read a series of short stories that contained information about the real world. After a short delay, all participants took a general knowledge test. Subjects did indeed use information from the stories to answer general knowledge questions. Prior reading of facts boosted participants’ abilities to produce both obscure and better-known facts, and the effect held for both correct and incorrect facts (misinformation). Repeated reading of the stories increased the effect. After a delay of one week, effects of story exposure were strongest for items that also had been tested in the first session. Subjects were aware of using story information, but interestingly, story exposure also increased belief that the facts had been known prior to the experiment, even for misinformation answers that were rarely produced without story reading.