Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons^™

The Truthiness Effect: The Influence Of Nonprobative Photos On Truth Judgments, Laura N. Mangus

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Truthiness is used to describe a person’s instinctive and rapid judgment about the truth of a claim, with no regard to logic or fact. Recent research has shown that a photo can influence a person to believe a claim is true, even if the photo used is non-probative. This effect is hypothesized to occur because photographs make claims easier to process while also enabling one to retrieve related thoughts and images to mind, which can then be mistaken for familiarity and truth (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, 2012). Cognitive load and response time manipulation were factors that had not …