NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Back to results
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ1073857
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Sep
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
Truthiness and Falsiness of Trivia Claims Depend on Judgmental Contexts
Newman, Eryn J.; Garry, Maryanne; Unkelbach, Christian; Bernstein, Daniel M.; Lindsay, D. Stephen; Nash, Robert A.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v41 n5 p1337-1348 Sep 2015
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 (c) in a fully between design, when people judged claims paired with either related, unrelated, or no photos, neither truthiness nor falsiness occurred. Our results suggest that photos influence people's judgments when a discrepancy arises in the expected ease of processing, and also support a mechanism in which--against a backdrop of an expected standard--related photos help people generate pseudoevidence to support claims.
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A