Abstract
To better understand the spread of fake news in the Internet age, it is important to uncover the variables that influence the perceived truth of information. Although previous research identified several reliable predictors of truth judgments—such as source credibility, repeated information exposure, and presentation format—little is known about their simultaneous effects. In a series of four experiments, we investigated how the abovementioned factors jointly affect the perceived truth of statements (Experiments 1 and 2) and simulated social media postings (Experiments 3 and 4). Experiment 1 explored the role of source credibility (high vs. low vs. no source information) and presentation format (with vs. without a picture). In Experiments 2 and 3, we additionally manipulated repeated exposure (yes vs. no). Finally, Experiment 4 examined the role of source credibility (high vs. low) and type of repetition (congruent vs. incongruent vs. no repetition) in further detail. In sum, we found no effect of presentation format on truth judgments, but strong, additive effects of source credibility and repetition. Truth judgments were higher for information presented by credible sources than non-credible sources and information without sources. Moreover, congruent (i.e., verbatim) repetition increased perceived truth whereas semantically incongruent repetition decreased perceived truth, irrespectively of the source. Our findings show that people do not rely on a single judgment cue when evaluating a statement’s truth but take source credibility and their meta-cognitive feelings into account.
Highlights
With the increasing use of social media (e.g., Twitter and Facebook) as a means to obtain current news, the amount of information disseminated has increased substantially
We found that expert sources increased the perceived truth of statements whereas lay sources decreased the perceived truth compared to a control condition without source information
As stated earlier, investigating joint effects of statement repetition, source credibility, and presentation format is important for applied reasons, because the three variables typically cooccur in the context of social media
Summary
With the increasing use of social media (e.g., Twitter and Facebook) as a means to obtain current news, the amount of information disseminated has increased substantially. In order to better understand why and when people believe in (fake) news, it is of utmost importance to study the cognitive processes underlying human information processing, to identify variables predicting the perceived truth of information (Brashier and Marsh 2020), and to explore how they act in combination. In this regard, the present work experimentally investigated whether source credibility, repeated exposure, and presentation format predict the perceived truth of statements and simulated social media postings
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