Investigating the robustness of the illusory truth effect across individual differences in cognitive ability, need for cognitive closure, and cognitive style

Abstract

People are more inclined to believe that information is true if they have encountered it before. Little is known about whether this illusory truth effect is influenced by individual differences in cognition. In seven studies (combined N = 2196), using both trivia statements (Studies 1-6) and partisan news headlines (Study 7), we investigate moderation by three factors that have been shown to play a critical role in epistemic processes: cognitive ability (Study 1, 2, 5), need for cognitive closure (Study 1), and cognitive style, that is, reliance on intuitive versus analytic thinking (Study 1, 3-7). All studies showed a significant illusory truth effect, but there was no evidence for moderation by any of the cognitive measures across studies. These results indicate that the illusory truth effect is robust to individual differences in cognitive ability, need for cognitive closure, and cognitive style.

Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking

“…Interestingly, the difference between familiar and unfamiliar headlines observed in our study in terms of perceived accuracy did not interact with analytic thinking performance. This is consistent with recent work showing that cognitive style and ability measures do not interact with the effect of experimentally induced familiarity (i.e., repeated exposure) on accuracy (De Keersmaecker et al, ). This supports the idea that the influence of prior exposure is driven by low‐level cognitive processes, such as fluency (Alter & Oppenheimer, ; Begg et al, ; Unkelbach, ; Whittlesea, ); and that familiarity‐related effects are not driving the correlation between CRT and media truth discernment.…”

Can corrections spread misinformation to new audiences? Testing for the elusive familiarity backfire effect

“…However, apart from that, we can only conclude from these results that a single exposure to a claim can lead to enhanced subsequent endorsement, but that this is not always the case. Thus, to some extent, this mirrors our conclusions regarding the role of familiarity for continued influence, in that the evidence regarding the illusory truth effects that we obtained is somewhat inconsistent, but generally suggests that familiarity likely impacts reasoning and endorsement of claims (we also note that evidence for illusory truth effects in general is much more solid than the evidence for familiarity backfire effects; e.g., see De keersmaecker et al, 2020 ).…”

Nomen est omen: why we need to rename ‘antimicrobial resistance’

“…In addition to the psychological research on the cognitive processes involved in word perception, literature from the fields of branding and marketing have highlighted the importance of word features such as memorability and uniqueness. 37 Memorability is typically determined by the existence of ‘semantic imbeds’, 38 i.e. meaningful word components that are recognizable and may convey inherent messages.…”