Dissociation of processes in belief: Source recollection, statement familiarity, and the illusion of truth.

Abstract

This article reports 4 experiments concerning the effect of repetition on rated truth (the illusorytruth effect). Statements were paired with differentially credible sources (true vs. false). Old trues would be rated true on 2 bases, source recollection and statement familiarity. Oldfalses, however, would be rated false if sources were recollected, leaving the unintentional influence of familiarity as their only basis for being rated true. Even so, falses were rated truer than new statements unless sources were especially memorable. Estimates showed the contributions of the 2 influences to be independent; the intentional influence of recollection was reduced if control was impaired, but the unintentional influence of familiarity remained constant.The truth of any proposition has nothing to do with its credibility and vice versa.-Parker's law of political statements (Bloch, 1979, p. 84) Our interest in this article is with the cognitive processes that influence ratings of probable truth. Ideally, a statement should not be accepted as true without factual evidence in support of its claims. However, people often rely on memories for that evidence. It is sensible to base truth ratings on whether expressed facts corroborate or contradict remembered facts. But memory is imperfect, and it is sensible to trust some remembered facts more than others. We propose that there are two independent bases on which remembered facts are given credence when people rate truth. One basis is recollection: A statement will be accepted as true if it corroborates remembered facts that are associated with a known, credible source, and it will be rejected as false if the facts are associated with a discredited source. The other basis is familiarity: A statement will seem true if it expresses facts that feel familiar. We propose, furthermore, that these two bases differ in the extent to which their influence is controlled rather than automatic. Recollection of source is a controlled use of memory, and its influence on rated truth is intentional. In contrast, increased familiarity is an automatic consequence of exposure, and its influence on rated truth is unintentional.This research was funded by Operating Grant OGP0008122 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; a certificate of approval from the McMaster Ethics Committee is on file. Part of the research was conducted as an honors thesis by Suzanne Farinacci, who was supervised by Ian Maynard Begg.We are grateful for the advice and discussion from our McMaster colleagues, including Marcia Barnes, Lee Brooks, Vincenza Gruppuso, Larry Jacoby, Janine Jennings, Steve Lindsay, Douglas Needham, Rohan Robertson, James Taylor, Jeff Toth, and Andy Yonelinas. We also thank Colleen Kelley of Macalester College for her counsel. Special thanks are due to Jim Anas for being a male voice on the tapes.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ian Maynard Begg, Department of Psychology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4K1.Our thesis is ...

Source misattributions and the suggestibility of eyewitness memory.

“…Lindsay & Johnson, 1989). There is now considerable evidence that access to familiarity information is automatic and unintentional, whereas recollection of source information requires more effortful and controlled processing (e.g., Begg, Anas, & Farinacci, 1992;Jacoby & Kelley, 1987;Jacoby, Woloshyn, & Kelley, 1989;Johnson, Kounios, & Reeder, 1992). Thus, it seems reasonable that reliance on familiarity would be the default strategy.…”

How Warnings about False Claims Become Recommendations

“…This effect occurs even for statements that are explicitly identified as false on initial presentation (Begg, Anas, and Farinacci 1992;Gilbert, Krull, and Malone 1990). One interpretation of this effect is that it comes from a constructive inference that people make when they have little information with which to judge the truth of a claim other than the realization that they have seen it before.…”

“…Past research has demonstrated enhanced truth ratings for a wide range of types of claims, including brand and product claims (Hawkins and Hoch 1992;Law et al 1998), trivia statements (Begg et al 1992;Hasher et al 1977), political opinions (Arkes, Hackett, and Boehm 1989), and invented vocabulary (Gilbert et al 1990). For our experiment, we chose to use claims about health and medicine.…”

Reflection and Impulse as Determinants of Human Behavior

“…Once the muffi n is added to the lunch options, the decision-maker must actively work against the temptation of the tasty dessert in order to generate the propositions about healthy eating that justify selecting the salad. This dependence of effortful processing on automatic activation has an interesting consequence: A fl uently (synergistically) processed inference should have a higher truth value than a disfl uently (antagonistically) processed inference does, unless the refl ective system specifi cally corrects for the consequences of fl uency (Allport & Lepkin, 1945 ;Begg, Anas, & Farinacci, 1992 ;Schwarz, Sanna, Skurnik, & Yoon, 2007 ). The fl uency of processing should affect both how sure a person is of a syllogistic inference and how securely she or he stands behind a given decision.…”