Newswise — Chestnut Hill, Mass. (7/17/2023) – Putting truth to the test in the “post-truth era”, Boston College psychologists conducted experiments that show when Americans decide whether a claim of fact should qualify as true or false, they consider the intentions of the information source, the team reported recently in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

That confidence is based on what individuals think the source is trying to do – in this case either informing or deceiving their audience.

“Even when people know precisely how accurate or inaccurate a claim of fact is, whether they consider that claim to be true or false hinges on the intentions they attribute to the claim’s information source,” said Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Liane Young, an author of the report. “In other words, the intentions of information sources sway people’s judgments about what information should qualify as true.”

Lead author Isaac Handley-Miner, a PhD student and researcher in Young’s Morality Lab, said the so-called post-truth era has revealed vigorous disagreement over the truth of claims of fact — even for claims that are easy to verify.

“That disagreement has alarmed our society,” said Handley-Miner. “After all, it’s often assumed that the labels ‘true’ and ‘false’ should correspond to the objective accuracy of a claim. But is objective accuracy actually the only criterion people consider when deciding what should qualify as true or false? Or, even when people know how objectively...

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