How Affect and Repetition Influence Judgments of Truth

The repetition-induced truth effect has been demonstrated before where people are more likely to believe information is true if they encounter it multiple times. This is possibly due to a faster ability to process the repeated information rather than assessing the quality of the information first. Past research suggests that this effect impacts whether someone judges a statement to be true in trivia, opinion, and advertising statements and in both written and spoken formats. For this phenomenon to work, a few days need to separate the encounters with the information.

The other effects considered in this study are affective processes (inducing emotions) and how inducing positive, neutral, or negative emotions may influence judgements of truthfulness. The referential theory was also considered, which is the idea that if a person has references that connect to a new statement, they are more likely to judge it as true. Repeating information also takes advantage of these references.

Finally, the feelings-as-information theory was considered. The theory operates on three mechanisms: the style of processing of information changes with different emotions, a person’s current feelings become a source for judging the truth of a statement, and a person's familiarity with information and its positive affect may increase the chance of judgements of truth.

In the first experiment, participants were presented with many true-or-false-type questions. In the second round, a picture that affected their mood was flashed in front of them. Garrido and Rock found that new statements were judged to be true more often than repeated ones when the participants were in a positive mood rather than a negative one. Repeated statements were found to be judged as true more than new ones.

In the second experiment, different participants were presented with a picture to induce a positive, negative, or neutral mood, followed by a true or false statement. There was a separate trial conducted for each mood. Garrido and Rock found that items were judged as true when they were actually false, more than true items as true. Items were rated as true more when a negative mood was induced, rather than a positive or neutral one.

Garrido and Rock concluded that the participants’ familiarity with the information as well as a positive mood increase the number of truth judgements.

The first experiment did not show an interaction between mood and repetition on judgement. Garrido and Rock therefore ruled out changes in the style of processing as a way to dictate correctness. The second experiment also did not show a relationship between truth judgements and mood when processing new statements. This caused them to rule out the participants’ current feelings as a measure of correct judgment.