Stable truthiness effect across the lifespan.

Abstract

When semantically-related photos appear with true-or-false trivia claims, people more often rate the claims as true compared to when photos are absent—truthiness. This occurs even when the photos lack information useful for assessing veracity. We tested whether truthiness changed in magnitude as a function of participants’ age in a diverse sample using materials appropriate for all ages. We tested participants (N = 414; Age range = 3–87 years) in two culturally diverse environments: a community science center (First language: English (61.4%); Mandarin/Cantonese (11.6%); Spanish (6%), other (21%); ethnicity: unreported) and a psychology lab (First language: English (64.4%); Punjabi (9.8%); Mandarin/Cantonese (7.4%); other (18.4%); ethnicity: Caucasian (38%); South Asian (30.7%); Asian (22.7%); other/unreported (8.6%). Participants rated trivia claims as true or false. Half the claims appeared with a semantically related photo, and half appeared without a photo. Results showed that participants of all ages more often rated claims as true when claims appeared with a photo; however, this truthiness effect was stable across the lifespan. If truthiness age differences exist, they are likely negligible in the general population.