1999 EffectsofPerceptualFluencyonJud
- (Reber & Schwarz, 1999) ⇒ Rolf Reber, and Norbert Schwarz. (1999). “Effects of Perceptual Fluency on Judgments of Truth.” In: Consciousness and cognition, 8(3).
Subject Headings: True Belief, True Statement, Statement Truth Judgement.
Notes
- It shows that color contrast can bias people’s responses on truth judgements of text statements.
- human subjects were more likely to think a text statement was true when it was written in high color contrast (blue words on white) as opposed to low contrast (yellow words on white).
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Abstract
Statements of the form "Osorno is in Chile" were presented in colors that made them easy or difficult to read against a white background and participants judged the truth of the statement. Moderately visible statements were judged as true at chance level, whereas highly visible statements were judged as true significantly above chance level. We conclude that perceptual fluency affects judgments of truth.
Introduction
Research has shown that repeated exposure increases the perceived truth of statements such as ‘‘Greenland has about 50,000 inhabitants,’’ compared to statements that have not been presented before (e.g., Arkes, Hackett, & Boehm, 1989; Begg, Anas, & Farinacci, 1992; Brown & Nix, 1996; Hasher, Goldstein, & Toppino, 1977). Both subjective familiarity and frequency of objective exposure of statements are likely to increase truth ratings (Brown & Nix, 1996). Whereas subjective familiarity may enhance truth judgments by allowing the judge to recollect additional information, it is less clear what mediates between the frequency of objective exposure and judgments of truth.
The possibility that semantic activation in an associative network may lead to higher truth judgments has received no support. Specifically, Begg, Armour, and Kerr (1985, Experiment 4) found that the effect of repeated exposure on truth judgments was not influenced by a level-of-processing manipulation at the encoding stage; whether participants had to rate ease of pronunciation, ease of understanding, ease of imagery, or frequency of encounter, the old–new differences in truth ratings were equal across level-of-processing conditions, although recognition memory was poorer in the pronunciation than in the other three conditions. As an alternative account, Begg et al. (1992) suggested that exposure enhances the ease of subsequent processing (as shown by Jacoby & Dallas, 1981), which in turn may influence judgments of truth. Using Jacoby’s (1991) process dissociation procedure, Begg et al. (1992) could show that conscious and automatic influences had independent effects on truth judgments. These dissociations between unconscious influences and intentional recollection suggest that a process such as perceptual fluency may mediate between repeated exposure and truth rating. This possibility is compatible with the available data, given that ease of processing has been found to increase feelings of familiarity (Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989; Whittlesea, Jacoby, & Girard, 1990) and feelings of knowing (Koriat, 1993), which in turn are likely to contribute to judgments of truth. Unfortunately, it is difficult to isolate the role of perceptual fluency in repeated-exposure paradigms because repeated exposure also provides participants with an opportunity to think more about the statement.
If perceptual fluency is the crucial mediating variable, however, any manipulation that facilitates processing of a statement should increase the likelihood that the statement is judged as true, even under conditions where the statement is shown only once. The present study tests this possibility with a perceptual fluency manipulation adapted from Whittlesea et al. (1990). Specifically, we presented statements in colors that made them more or less easy to perceive against a white background, thus manipulating ease of processing independent of exposure frequency. We expected that the same statement, shown only once, would receive higher truth ratings when it is easy rather than difficult to process. This single-exposure procedure isolates the role of perceptual fluency and renders a differential semantic activation interpretation unlikely, thus avoiding a key ambiguity of repeated-exposure procedures.
METHOD
Two hundred thirty-five undergraduates participated for credit in the experiment. The experiment was run individually on Macintosh computers with color screens, using PsyScope, Version 1.0.2b.4 (Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt & Provost, 1993).
Thirty-two statements of the form ‘‘Town A is in country B’’ (e.g., Osorno is in Chile; Lima is in Peru) were presented in the center of the screen. There were more familiar cities (e.g., Lima, Teheran) in half of the statements and less familiar cities (e.g., Bolligen, Osorno) in the other half of the statements (city familiarity). Half of the statements were actually true, and the other half were wrong (actual truth). Visibility of the statements was manipulated by the contrast of colors to the white background. Highly visible colors included blue and red, and moderately visible colors included green, yellow, and light blue.
References
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| Author | volume | Date Value | title | type | journal | titleUrl | doi | note | year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 EffectsofPerceptualFluencyonJud | Rolf Reber Norbert Schwarz | Effects of Perceptual Fluency on Judgments of Truth | 1999 |