Psychology Commons^™

Aging And The Truth Effect In Validity Judgment, Sue Lindsey

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

It is sometimes necessary to make validity judgments about information with which we are unfamiliar, because we have no factual knowledge about the event. Under these circumstances, subjective evidence, such as whether the statement has been seen or heard in the past, may be used to judge validity. Previous research has shown that the repetition of unfamiliar, but plausible statements increases the judged validity of the statements. In other words, the more one hears a particular statement, the more one believes it to be true. The present study has been designed to explore this "truth effect." The first experiment examined …