The effect of nonprobative photographs on truthiness persists over time ☆ Elise Fenn a , Eryn J. Newman b , Kathy Pezdek a, ⁎, Maryanne Garry b a Department of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University, 150 E. 10th St., Claremont, CA 91711, USA b School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Kelburn Parade, PO Box 600, Wellington 6012, New Zealand abstract article info Article history: Received 26 March 2013 Received in revised form 11 June 2013 Accepted 13 June 2013 Available online 20 July 2013 PsycINFO codes: 2343 Learning and Memory 2340 Cognitive Processes Keywords: Memory Relative judgments Cognitive fluency When making rapid judgments about the truth of a claim, related nonprobative information leads people to believe the claim—an effect called “truthiness” (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, 2012). For instance, within a matter of seconds, subjects judge the claim “The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows,” to be true more often when it appears with a photograph of the Mona Lisa viewed at a distance by a person. But does truthiness persist longer than a few seconds? To determine if truthiness “sticks,” we asked people to judge if each trivia claim in a series was true. Half of the claims appeared with nonprobative photos; the rest appeared alone. In a second session 48 h later, people returned and made the same judgments about the same statements, but this time, all claims appeared without photos. We found that truthiness “stuck.” The magnitude of the effect of photos on subjective feelings of truth was consistent over time. These results fit with those from cognitive and educational psychology, as well as with the related idea that photos make relevant information more available and familiar—and therefore feel more true—even after a delay. © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. 1. Introduction More than ever, people are overwhelmed by information, much of it from sources with unknown credibility (politically slanted media networks, a friend's Facebook status update, tweets, blogs, and even Wikipedia). Take, for example, the various falsely tweeted statements from alleged witnesses to the devastation recently caused by the severe storm Sandy in New York City. Even otherwise credible sources unwit- tingly made false statements. While standing against the backdrop of a flooded street, a CNN reporter told viewers that the NY Stock Exchange was under three feet of water. Until it was debunked, many viewers ac- cepted this statement as true. Why? One possibility is that the legitima- cy of the report of the flooded Stock Exchange was enhanced by the visual backdrop of surging flood waters, even though the images were not probative—they did not show the NY Stock Exchange at all and thus did not shed direct light on the accuracy of the statement. Could these nonprobative images nonetheless have biased people to accept the statement as true? Recent research suggests that the answer is yes: nonprobative images can affect people's judgments in a systematic way (Newman et al., 2012). People were asked to judge a series of trivia claims as true or false; sometimes the claims appeared with a nonprobative photo—a photo that was related to the claim but did not reveal whether the claim was true or false. At other times the claims appeared alone. For example, in the photo condition, the statement, “The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows” appeared with a photo of the Mona Lisa viewed at a distance by a person. People were more likely to say that claims were true when those claims appeared with a photo. In other words, related but nonprobative photos promoted what Newman et al. (borrowing from Stephen Colbert) described as “truthiness.” That is, when making rapid judgments about the truth of a claim, nonprobative photos lead people to believe that claim. Why would seemingly unhelpful photos lead people to believe a claim quickly? One possibility is that they promote truthiness by helping people generate thoughts and images relating to the claim, boosting con- ceptual fluency or helping people to mine the photo for evidence that the claim is true. Although photos might set these mechanisms in motion rapidly, and cause truthiness within a few seconds, does the effect “stick” and persist over time? That is the question we address here. Acta Psychologica 144 (2013) 207–211 ☆ Author note: This research was part of the MA thesis of Elise Fenn under the su- pervision of Kathy Pezdek, conducted in collaboration with Eryn Newman and Maryanne Garry. We are grateful for the support of the New Zealand Government through the Marsden Fund, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand on be- half of the Marsden Fund Council. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 909 621 8084. E-mail addresses: Elise.Mayberry@cgu.edu (E. Fenn), Eryn.Newman@vuw.ac.nz (E.J. Newman), Kathy.Pezdek@cgu.edu (K. Pezdek), Maryanne.Garry@vuw.ac.nz (M. Garry). 0001-6918/$ – see front matter © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.06.004 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/ locate/actpsy