Calio Frank, Nadarevic Lena, Musch Jochen
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Düsseldorf, Germany.
Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, Germany.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2020 Nov;211:103185. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103185. Epub 2020 Oct 30.
The finding that repeating a statement typically increases its perceived truth has been referred to as the truth effect. Previous research has found that warning participants about the truth effect can successfully reduce, but not eliminate the effect. We used a multinomial modeling approach to investigate how warnings affect the cognitive processes that are assumed to underlie judgments of truth. In a laboratory experiment (N = 167), half of the participants were warned about the truth effect before judging the truth of repeated and new statements. Importantly, whereas half of the presented statements were of relatively unknown validity, participants could likely identify the correct truth status for the other half of the statements by drawing on stored knowledge. Multinomial modeling analyses revealed that warning instructions did not affect the retrieval of knowledge or participants' guessing behavior relative to a control condition. Instead, warned participants exhibited a significantly reduced tendency to rely on experiential information such as processing fluency when judging a repeated statement's truth. However, this was only the case for statements for which participants held relevant knowledge. These results are consistent with the notion that it is possible to discount metacognitive experiences such as processing ease when their informational value is questioned. Specifically, our findings suggest that people are less likely to base their judgments of truth on experiential information and metacognitive experiences induced by repetition if (a) they are warned about the deceptive power of repetition, and (b) other valid cues are available to inform their judgments.
重复某一陈述通常会增加其被感知到的真实性，这一发现被称为真理效应。先前的研究发现，提醒参与者注意真理效应能够成功减少，但无法消除该效应。我们采用多项建模方法来探究提醒如何影响那些被认为是真理判断基础的认知过程。在一项实验室实验（N = 167）中，一半参与者在判断重复陈述和新陈述的真实性之前，被提醒了真理效应。重要的是，虽然所呈现的陈述中有一半的有效性相对未知，但参与者可以通过利用存储的知识来确定另一半陈述的正确真实状态。多项建模分析表明，与控制条件相比，提醒指令并未影响知识的检索或参与者的猜测行为。相反，被提醒的参与者在判断重复陈述的真实性时，依赖诸如加工流畅性等经验信息的倾向显著降低。然而，只有在参与者拥有相关知识的陈述中才是这种情况。这些结果与以下观点一致：当元认知体验（如加工流畅性）的信息价值受到质疑时，人们有可能对其进行折扣处理。具体而言，我们的研究结果表明，如果（a）人们被提醒重复具有欺骗性，且（b）有其他有效的线索可用于指导他们的判断，那么他们就不太可能将对真理的判断基于重复所引发的经验信息和元认知体验。
