Investigating the Robustness of the Illusory Truth Effect Across Individual Differences in Cognitive Ability, Need for Cognitive Closure, and Cognitive Style
Name
Individualdifferences-illusorytrutheffect.Acceptedversion.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
562.01 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
01749538a2b4e0df324fca200288338c
Author(s)
De keersmaecker, Jonas
Dunning, David
Pennycook, Gordon
Rand, David G
Sanchez, Carmen
Unkelbach, Christian
Roets, Arne
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2019 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc. 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 = 2,196), 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 (Studies 1, 2, 5), need for cognitive closure (Study 1), and cognitive style, that is, reliance on intuitive versus analytic thinking (Studies 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.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219853844
