Truthiness and falsiness of trivia claims depend on judgmental contexts

Eryn J. Newman; Maryanne Garry; Christian Unkelbach; Daniel M. Bernstein; D. Stephen Lindsay; Robert A. Nash

doi:10.1037/xlm0000099

Truthiness and falsiness of trivia claims depend on judgmental contexts

Eryn J. Newman^*, Maryanne Garry, Christian Unkelbach, Daniel M. Bernstein, D. Stephen Lindsay, Robert A. Nash

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

When people rapidly judge the truth of claims presented with or without related but nonprobative photos, the photos tend to inflate the subjective truth of those claims-a "truthiness" effect (Newman et al., 2012). For example, people more often judged the claim "Macadamia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches" to be true when the claim appeared with a photo of a bowl of macadamia nuts than when it appeared alone. We report several replications of that effect and 3 qualitatively new findings: (a) in a within-subjects design, when people judged claims paired with a mix of related, unrelated, or no photos, related photos produced truthiness but unrelated photos had no significant effect relative to no photos; (b) in a mixed design, when people judged claims paired with related (or unrelated) and no photos, related photos produced truthiness and unrelated photos produced "falseness;" and

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1337-1348
Number of pages	12
Journal	Journal of Experimental Psychology
Volume	41
Issue number	5
Early online date	30 Mar 2015
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000099
Publication status	Published - 1 Sept 2015

Bibliographical note

Keywords

cognitive fluency
photographs
truth judgments
truthiness

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10.1037/xlm0000099

Truthiness and falsiness of trivia claims depend on judgmental contexts
© APA. This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.
Accepted author manuscript, 1.05 MB

http://psycnet.apa.org/psycarticles/2015-13956-001

Cite this

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title = "Truthiness and falsiness of trivia claims depend on judgmental contexts",

abstract = "When people rapidly judge the truth of claims presented with or without related but nonprobative photos, the photos tend to inflate the subjective truth of those claims-a {"}truthiness{"} effect (Newman et al., 2012). For example, people more often judged the claim {"}Macadamia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches{"} to be true when the claim appeared with a photo of a bowl of macadamia nuts than when it appeared alone. We report several replications of that effect and 3 qualitatively new findings: (a) in a within-subjects design, when people judged claims paired with a mix of related, unrelated, or no photos, related photos produced truthiness but unrelated photos had no significant effect relative to no photos; (b) in a mixed design, when people judged claims paired with related (or unrelated) and no photos, related photos produced truthiness and unrelated photos produced {"}falseness;{"} and",

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AU - Newman, Eryn J.

AU - Garry, Maryanne

AU - Unkelbach, Christian

AU - Bernstein, Daniel M.

AU - Lindsay, D. Stephen

AU - Nash, Robert A.

N1 - © APA. This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.

PY - 2015/9/1

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N2 - When people rapidly judge the truth of claims presented with or without related but nonprobative photos, the photos tend to inflate the subjective truth of those claims-a "truthiness" effect (Newman et al., 2012). For example, people more often judged the claim "Macadamia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches" to be true when the claim appeared with a photo of a bowl of macadamia nuts than when it appeared alone. We report several replications of that effect and 3 qualitatively new findings: (a) in a within-subjects design, when people judged claims paired with a mix of related, unrelated, or no photos, related photos produced truthiness but unrelated photos had no significant effect relative to no photos; (b) in a mixed design, when people judged claims paired with related (or unrelated) and no photos, related photos produced truthiness and unrelated photos produced "falseness;" and

AB - When people rapidly judge the truth of claims presented with or without related but nonprobative photos, the photos tend to inflate the subjective truth of those claims-a "truthiness" effect (Newman et al., 2012). For example, people more often judged the claim "Macadamia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches" to be true when the claim appeared with a photo of a bowl of macadamia nuts than when it appeared alone. We report several replications of that effect and 3 qualitatively new findings: (a) in a within-subjects design, when people judged claims paired with a mix of related, unrelated, or no photos, related photos produced truthiness but unrelated photos had no significant effect relative to no photos; (b) in a mixed design, when people judged claims paired with related (or unrelated) and no photos, related photos produced truthiness and unrelated photos produced "falseness;" and

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Truthiness and falsiness of trivia claims depend on judgmental contexts

Abstract

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Keywords

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