title: People with easier to pronounce names promote truthiness of claims.
abstract: When people make judgments about the truth of a claim, related but nonprobative information rapidly leads them to believe the claim--an effect called "truthiness". Would the pronounceability of others' names also influence the truthiness of claims attributed to them? We replicated previous work by asking subjects to evaluate people's names on a positive dimension, and extended that work by asking subjects to rate those names on negative dimensions. Then we addressed a novel theoretical issue by asking subjects to read that same list of names, and judge the truth of claims attributed to them. Across all experiments, easily pronounced names trumped difficult names. Moreover, the effect of pronounceability produced truthiness for claims attributed to those names. Our findings are a new instantiation of truthiness, and extend research on the truth effect as well as persuasion by showing that subjective, tangential properties such as ease of processing can matter when people evaluate information attributed to a source.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Eryn J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Newman
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Mevagh
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sanson
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Emily K
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Adele
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Quigley-McBride
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Jeffrey L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Foster
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Daniel M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Bernstein
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Maryanne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Garry
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D009275:Names; D014342:Truth Disclosure