Truthiness Persist Over Time

Truthiness Persists over Time
In the research article “The effect of nonprobative photographs on truthiness persists over time” published in Acta Psychologica, researchers Fenn, Newman, Pezdek and Garry (2013) intend to determine whether or not the nonprobative photographs have a long effect on people’s judgments about the reliability of a series of trivia. That is to say, the exact research question is “Does the effect of nonprobative photographs on truthiness persist over time?” From the research, people are able to see the way their brain acquires information and is able to determine the reliability of their brain after forty eight hours.
In recent years, people have had the ability to access enormous information easily through non-credible
sources, especially through widespread social networking sites such as Facebook, and Twitter where people are free to share information with one another. For instance, a Facebook status update states that commodities and nourishments in Vietnam are spurious and have noxious ingredients such as Melamine, Malachite Green, Cyclamate, Rholamin B… Along with the information, there are low quality photographs of people making foods in contaminated environment with several cans of unidentified substances. Even though these photographs were taken in China, people easily trust the information that the events are proceeding in Vietnam. However, are people’s judgments about the claim still corresponding to their initial judgments after a delay?
By conducting the experiments, the researchers are able to indicate the long effect of people’s judgments upon the information they perceive.
The researchers split the experiment into two trials. Each trial has thirty six identical trivia claims with divergent conditions. In the first trial, the condition is that half of the questions will be present with the nonprobative photographs, which means they are related to the trivia claims but do not suggest the answers. In the second trial, the condition changes to all of the questions will be present with only trivia claims. In both conditions, the participants have to answer that whether the trivia claim is true or false. By designing these two conditions, the researchers will be able to compare the participants’ bias to say “true” with the trivia claims that have nonprobative photographs versus with only the trivia claims in the first trial and in the second trial. After comparing, the researchers will be able to indicate that whether or not the participants still maintain their answers of trivia claims with nonprobative photographs in the second
trial.
To answer the question posed, the researchers use the Signal Detection Theory to measure whether or not the presence of the nonprobative photographs influences the participants’ tendency to answer “true” or “false” to the trivia claims. After examining the statistic, the researchers discover that seeing nonprobative photographs in the first trial leads to increased truthiness in the second trial. That is to say, on the trivia claims with nonprobative photographs, the number of the “truth” answers increases in the second trial. Even though the change is not significant, it still demonstrates that the participants maintain their truthiness over time. The researchers also use ANOVA to calculate the data to reconfirm the findings. The results of ANOVA display that the participants tend answer “true” more often with the trivia claims that appeared with nonprobative photographs than the trivia claims that appeared alone. On the other hand, the researchers also explore that their experiment reconfirms the initial research about repetition increase judgments of truth (Bacon, 1979; Begg, Anas, & Farinacci, 1992; Unkelbach, 2007).
Eventually, the researchers conclude that besides serving to help people organize and keep possession of information (Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Carney & Levin, 2002), photographs also have “lasting and distorting effects on people’s jusgements” (Fenn et al., 2013).
From what the researchers found, people can have a broader implication on how others can take advantage of the photographs to make them change their judgments about whether the information they perceive from the non-credible sources is true or false over time. As an illustration, the pyramid sales employees of Herballife can use photographs of people’s changes of body over time when using their products to convince people to agree with their statement that their products are effective and healthy. Therefore, people should participate in their scheme to have the best result. By that method, the pyramid sales employees are able to recruit thousands of people to join them. According to the research, these people will maintain their beliefs up to forty eight hours that their body will improve as the photograph presents. By the time they realize it may not as what they have been told, it was too late because they already bought the products and be part of the scheme. Nevertheless, because of the research, people understand the power of truthiness over time. Whenever people are convinced to make a decision, they can wait at least forty eight hours to think and decide it in the most effective and beneficial
way.