Summary: Psychologists revealed people’s judgments of truthfulness are influenced by what they perceive as the information source’s intentions.

They found that even when individuals knew the factual accuracy of a claim, their judgment of its truth was affected by whether they thought the source was trying to deceive or inform them. This tendency held true for both politicized and non-politicized topics.

This research uncovers a new facet of truth perception, showing that objective accuracy is not the only criterion considered.

Key Facts:

1. Perception of a source’s intention, whether informative or deceptive, influences people’s judgment about the truthfulness of a claim.
2. This influence persists even when individuals have clear knowledge of the factual accuracy of a claim.
3. Discrepancies in attributed intentions to information sources could lead to disagreements about the truth of claims even when individuals share the same set of facts.

Source: Boston College

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...

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