You won't believe it! Truth judgments for clickbait headlines benefit (but less so) from prior exposure

Abstract

In two high‐powered experiments, we investigated how prior exposure to statements presented in a clickbait format increases the perceived truth of their content. In Experiment 1 (N = 241), we hypothesized and found that prior exposure increased the proportion of “true” judgments for both non‐clickbait and clickbait content, but with a reduced effect of prior exposure for statements originally presented in a clickbait format. In Experiment 2 (N = 291), turning to continuous ratings, we found higher truth ratings for repeated than new clickbait statements, even when repetition evidently originated from prior exposure to clickbait statements. The present findings suggest that exposure to clickbait headlines can increase their content's truth judgments despite their overall lack of credibility, although to a lesser extent than for more regular statements. The present research additionally supports an implausibility account rather than a source memory account of the truth effect with clickbait statements.