Beyond the post: Effects of vividness dominance on attention and recall of visual misinformation on social media (2026)

Visual misinformation is prevalent on social media and can impede informed decision-making. While prior research has focused on post-level characteristics of visual misinformation, little is known about how the relative distribution of visual intensity between a focal post and other posts in a feed shapes its processing. This webcam-based eye-tracking study investigated how such vividness dominance influenced attention to and recall of visual misinformation. We manipulated vividness dominance by varying whether perceptual intensity was concentrated in the focal misinformation post (focal vividness dominance) or in the surrounding posts (surrounding vividness dominance). Using 347 U.S. participants from Prolific (mean age = 40.35; 56.5% female; 79.4% White), results showed that, participants in the focal vividness dominance condition fixated on the focal misinformation post more quickly than those in the surrounding vividness dominance condition. However, the two groups did not differ in dwell time or message recall. These findings extend the literature on visual misinformation by showing that the visual attention to misleading content—and especially how quickly people fixate on it— depends on its relative perceptual intensity within a visual feed. More broadly, our study also underscores the importance of considering the distribution of visual features across posts when studying visual (mis)information on social media.