Frequency and the conference of referential validity

Hasher, Lynn; Goldstein, David H.; Toppino, Thomas C.

doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(77)80012-1

Cited by 726 publications

(549 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The illusory-truth effect was first observed by Hasher, Goldstein, and Toppino (1977), who found that subjects rated repeated statements as more probably true than new statements. Repetition is an illogical basis for truth; Wittgenstein likened the tendency to believe repeated information to buying a second newspaper to see if the first one was right (Kenny, 1973).…”

Section: Illusory Truthmentioning

confidence: 92%

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

Begg

Anas²,

Farinacci³

1992

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

535

426

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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 ...

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Section: Illusory Truthmentioning

confidence: 92%

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

Begg

Anas²,

Farinacci³

1992

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

535

426

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Numerous studies have demonstrated that exposing people to claims increases the perceived truth of the claim when it is seen again later (e.g., Hasher et al 1977;Hawkins and Hoch 1992). 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).…”

Section: Memory For Truthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Without supporting information to help determine truth (along the lines of memory for truth-specifying contextual details such as the source of communication or expertise and background knowledge related to the claim), people often judge a claim to be true on the basis of some partial information in memory, such as the claim's subjective familiarity. As a general strategy, this type of constructive inference is appropriate if most information that people encounter or remember is actually true (Grice 1989;Hasher et al 1977;Skurnik, Schwarz, and Winkielman 2000), but it creates a memory-based illusion of truth for familiar information that is actually false.…”

Section: Memory For Truthmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How Warnings about False Claims Become Recommendations

Skurnik¹,

Yoon²,

Park³

et al. 2005

J CONSUM RES

341

259

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Telling people that a consumer claim is false can make them misremember it as true. In two experiments, older adults were especially susceptible to this "illusion of truth" effect. Repeatedly identifying a claim as false helped older adults remember it as false in the short term but paradoxically made them more likely to remember it as true after a 3 day delay. This unintended effect of repetition comes from increased familiarity with the claim itself but decreased recollection of the claim's original context. Findings provide insight into susceptibility over time to memory distortions and exploitation via repetition of claims in media and advertising.

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“…Random errors can be introduced into a signal during transmission and reception, but the probability that the same random error has been introduced into separate transmissions and receptions of the same signal decreases rapidly with the number of signal transmissions and receptions. Previous studies have shown that repeated statements are more believed than unrepeated statements, whether or not the statements are actually true (e.g., Bacon 1979;Hasher, Goldstein, and Toppino 1977;Hertwig, Gigerenzer, and Hoffrage 1997), a phenomenon referred to as the "truth" or "reiteration" effect. This effect has been demonstrated for "trivia"-possible factual statements about the non-social world, such as "the Eiffel Tower is 986 feet tall."…”

Section: Previous Research and Predictions For The Current Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity

Hess

Hagen

2006

Hum Nat

113

105

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Evolutionary models of human cooperation are increasingly emphasizing the role of reputation and the requisite truthful "gossiping" about reputation-relevant behavior. If resources were allocated among individuals according to their reputations, competition for resources via competition for "good" reputations would have created incentives for exaggerated or deceptive gossip about oneself and one's competitors in ancestral societies. Correspondingly, humans should have psychological adaptations to assess gossip veracity. Using social psychological methods, we explored cues of gossip veracity in four experiments. We found that simple reiteration increased gossip veracity, but only for those who found the gossip relatively uninteresting. Multiple sources of gossip increased its veracity, as did the independence of those sources. Information that suggested alternative, benign interpretations of gossip decreased its veracity. Competition between a gossiper and her target decreased gossip veracity. These results provide preliminary evidence for psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity, mechanisms that might be used to assess veracity in other domains involving social exchange of information.

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Frequency and the conference of referential validity

Cited by 726 publications

References 11 publications

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

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

How Warnings about False Claims Become Recommendations

Psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity

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