More familiar, more credible? Distinguishing two types of familiarity on the truth effect using the drift-diffusion model

ABSTRACT

Familiar information is more likely to be accepted as true. This illusory truth effect has a tremendous negative impact on misinformation intervention. Previous studies focused on the familiarity from repeated exposure in the laboratory, ignoring preexisting familiarity with real-world misinformation. Over three studies (total N = 337), we investigated the cognitive mechanisms behind the truth biases from these two familiarity sources, and whether fact-checking can curb such biased truth perceptions. Studies 1 and 2 found robust truth effects induced by two sources of familiarity but with different cognitive processes. According to the cognitive process model, repetition-induced familiarity reduced decision prudence. Preexisting familiarity instead enhanced truth-congruent evidence accumulation. Study 3 showed that pre-exposing statements with warning flags eliminated the bias to truth induced by repetition but not that from preexisting familiarity. These repeated statements with warning labels also reduced decision caution. These findings furthered the understanding of how different sources of familiarity affect truth perceptions and undermine the intervention through different cognitive processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Drift-diffusion model
• familiarity
• misinformation
• truth effect

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank Zheng Qi, Bing-Bing Xia, and Zhen-Wei Zhou for their kind help in data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

The research project was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shanghai Normal University. The committee did not provide approval numbers. In all the experiments, each participant received informed consent before taking the experiment.

Author contribution

The authors made the following contributions. Wanke Pan: Conceptualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing; Tian-Yi Hu: Writing – Review & Editing.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/k7t4h.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/u6g2e/

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71601122].

Notes on contributors

Wanke Pan

Wanke Pan was primarily responsible for the drafting of this manuscript and the data analysis.

Tian-Yi Hu

Tian-Yi Hu contributed through supervision and critical revisions of the manuscript.