Stable truthiness effect across the lifespan.

Abstract

When semantically-related photos appear with true-or-false trivia claims, people more often rate the claims as true compared to when photos are absent-truthiness. This occurs even when the photos lack information useful for assessing veracity. We tested whether truthiness changed in magnitude as a function of participants' age in a diverse sample using materials appropriate for all ages. We tested participants (N = 414; Age range = 3-87 years) in two culturally diverse environments: a community science center (First language: English (61.4%); Mandarin/Cantonese (11.6%); Spanish (6%), other (21%); ethnicity: unreported) and a psychology lab (First language: English (64.4%); Punjabi (9.8%); Mandarin/Cantonese (7.4%); other (18.4%); ethnicity: Caucasian (38%); South Asian (30.7%); Asian (22.7%); other/unreported (8.6%). Participants rated trivia claims as true or false. Half the claims appeared with a semantically related photo, and half appeared without a photo. Results showed that participants of all ages more often rated claims as true when claims appeared with a photo; however, this truthiness effect was stable across the lifespan. If truthiness age differences exist, they are likely negligible in the general population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).