Discrepant fluency increases subjective truth

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Abstract

The present experiment tested the hypothesis that perceptual fluency affects truth judgments especially when the fluency has changed. Participants were asked to judge the truth of statements that were printed in different colors. Perceptual fluency was manipulated by color contrast. Change versus no change of fluency was manipulated by using preceding statements that had the same or a different contrast. As expected, highly fluent statements were judged as more probably true than statements with a low fluency but this effect occurred only when the high fluency meant a change from previous fluency. The role of discrepancies in subjective experiences in terms of their informativeness for social judgments is discussed.

Section snippets

The experiment

We tested the hypothesis that highly fluent statements are perceived as more probably true than statements with low fluency but that this effect will be more pronounced when the fluency deviates from a previous standard. Participants were asked to judge the truth of different statements. Adopting the procedure of Reber and Schwarz (1999), we manipulated the perceptual fluency of the statements by varying the color contrast. Additionally, we varied the change in perceptual fluency by using

Participants and design

Ninety-five psychology students took part in a study that ostensibly dealt with color perception in exchange for course credit. They were randomly assigned to a 2 (Perceptual fluency: high vs. low) × 2 (Change of fluency: change vs. no change) × 2 (Control factor: start with low vs. high contrast) split-plot design with the first two factors varied within participants and the last factor varied between participants.

We excluded five participants because they correctly suspected that we were

Results

The truth ratings of the four target items were analyzed with a 2 (Perceptual fluency: high vs. low) × 2 (Change of fluency: change vs. no change) × 2 (Control factor: start with low vs. high contrast) analysis of variance with the first two factors being within-participants factors. When the fluency of the target statements deviated from the fluency of the preceding statements, target statements were judged as more probably true (M = 3.96) than when there was no change in fluency (M = 3.59), F(1, 85) = 

Discussion

Statements with a high color contrast, which are therefore highly fluent, were trusted more than statements with a low color contrast when the fluency was discrepant with a previous fluency but not when it was congruent. In other words, the impact of fluency on truth judgments was larger when fluency changed than when it was constant over several trials. Perceptual fluency per se had no influence on the truth rating. Only discrepant fluency had the potential to increase subjective truth. This

Acknowledgments

We thank Rolf Reber, Norbert Schwarz, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

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