Judging Truth Brashier, Nadia M; Marsh, Elizabeth J
Annual review of psychology,
01/2020, Letnik:
71, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Deceptive claims surround us, embedded in fake news, advertisements, political propaganda, and rumors. How do people know what to believe? Truth judgments reflect inferences drawn from three types of ...information: base rates, feelings, and consistency with information retrieved from memory. First, people exhibit a bias to accept incoming information, because most claims in our environments are true. Second, people interpret feelings, like ease of processing, as evidence of truth. And third, people can (but do not always) consider whether assertions match facts and source information stored in memory. This three-part framework predicts specific illusions (e.g., truthiness, illusory truth), offers ways to correct stubborn misconceptions, and suggests the importance of converging cues in a post-truth world, where falsehoods travel further and faster than the truth.
Aristotle's theory of truth, which has been the most influential account of the concept of truth from Antiquity onwards, spans several areas of philosophy: philosophy of language, logic, ontology and ...epistemology. In this 2004 book, Paolo Crivelli discusses all the main aspects of Aristotle's views on truth and falsehood. He analyses in detail the main relevant passages, addresses some well-known problems of Aristotelian semantics, and assesses Aristotle's theory from the point of view of modern analytic philosophy. In the process he discusses most of the literature on Aristotle's semantic theory to have appeared in the last two centuries. His book vindicates and clarifies the often repeated claim that Aristotle's is a correspondence theory of truth. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers working in both ancient philosophy and modern philosophy of language.
Dass Marx' Gesellschaftskritik den wissenschaftlichen Anspruch hat, wahr zu sein, scheint selbstverständlich. Doch was für ein Wahrheitsverständnis liegt einem Denken zugrunde, das die ...gesellschaftlichen und politischen Verhältnisse im Hinblick auf die Möglichkeit ihrer praktischen Umwälzung zu begreifen versucht? Dieser Frage wird in drei Studien nachgegangen, die anhand der Marx'schen Überlegungen zur Organisierung revolutionärer Subjektivität, seiner journalistischen Arbeiten sowie seiner Kritik der politischen Ökonomie den immanenten Zusammenhang von wissenschaftlichem Wahrheitsanspruch und Revolutionsperspektive in Marx' Werk herausarbeiten. Dadurch eröffnet sich zugleich der Blick auf eine zentrale Problematik jeder modernen Gesellschaftskritik, die einen begründeten Anspruch auf Wahrheit hat.
In the wake of South Africa's truth‐telling experiment as part of its transition from apartheid to democracy, truth commissions have become one of the most utilized mechanisms for addressing past ...atrocities. While most truth commissions are established in countries undergoing “transition” to democratic governance or peace, increasingly, established democracies such as Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have also undertaken such processes to address historical (and often, racial) injustices. The U.S. Department of State has denied the relevance of truth commissions to the United States for addressing its own history of racial injustice, however, the U.S. itself has been home to at least 13 official truth commissions (operating primarily at the state‐, county‐, and city‐level) and numerous unofficial truth‐telling processes emanating from civil society. In this article, I review literature on truth commissions with a focus on history and theorized importance, recent application to the more established democracies of the “Global North” and overall significance and limitations in terms of fostering racial justice and social transformation in what are primarily settler colonial states. I conclude by evaluating the state of this research area and by suggesting directions for future research.
The illusory truth effect refers to the fact that repetition increases perceptions of truth. In these experiments, we examined whether the magnitude of the illusory truth effect varies based upon ...repetition spacing. In Experiment 1, participants read facts that repeated twice, with a lag of 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 intervening facts. Participants later rated the truthfulness of these facts in addition to new facts. Here, we observed a spacing effect: Truth ratings were higher when repetitions were spaced (i.e., lags of 1 through 32) rather than massed (i.e., lag of 0). We also observed a lag effect that followed a quadratic pattern: Truth ratings increased up to a lag of 16, after which they decreased. In Experiment 2 we tested whether the spacing effect in truth ratings depends upon the number of repetitions. In Experiment 2a we used a small number of repetitions (2, 3, or 4) and short lag lengths (0, 1, or 2). In Experiment 2b, we increased the number of repetitions (2 or 10) and the lag lengths (0 or 10). In Experiment 2a there was an illusory truth effect, but its magnitude did not depend upon lag length or repetition number. However, in Experiment 2b the magnitude of the illusory truth effect increased as lag length and repetition number increased, but there was no interaction between these two factors. Together, these findings show that repetition is most likely to increase perceived truth when repetitions are spaced with a moderate number of intervening items.
After explaining why, after dealing with post‐modernist confusions about truth in various books and articles from the mid‐1990s to, most recently, 2014 (§1), Haack returns to the topic of truth. She ...begins (§2) with some thoughts about the claim that concern for truth is on the decline, and perhaps at a new low; a claim that, sadly, may well be true. Then (§3) she looks at some of the many forms that carelessness with the truth may take, and shows that, so far from revealing that the concept of truth is seriously problematic or that there is no such thing as objective truth, it simply makes no sense to say that lies, half‐truths, etc., are ubiquitous unless there is such a thing as truth, and a legitimate truth‐concept. After that, (§4) she argues that, of course, there is such a thing as objective truth, and a robust truth‐concept. And finally, (§5) she suggests some ways to fight against the rising tide of unconcern for truth—and gives her answer to the (trick) question in her subtitle.
The terms "post-truth" and "fake news" have become increasingly prevalent in public discourse over the last year. This article explores the growing abundance of misinformation, how it influences ...people, and how to counter it. We examine the ways in which misinformation can have an adverse impact on society. We summarize how people respond to corrections of misinformation, and what kinds of corrections are most effective. We argue that to be effective, scientific research into misinformation must be considered within a larger political, technological, and societal context. The post-truth world emerged as a result of societal mega-trends such as a decline in social capital, growing economic inequality, increased polarization, declining trust in science, and an increasingly fractionated media landscape. We suggest that responses to this malaise must involve technological solutions incorporating psychological principles, an interdisciplinary approach that we describe as "technocognition." We outline a number of recommendations to counter misinformation in a post-truth world.
General Audience Summary
Imagine a world that considers knowledge to be "elitist." Imagine a world in which it is not medical knowledge but a free-for-all opinion market on Twitter that determines whether a newly emergent strain of avian flu is really contagious to humans. This dystopian future is still just that-a possible future. However, there are signs that public discourse is evolving in this direction: terms such as "post-truth" and "fake news," largely unknown until 2016, have exploded into media and public discourse. This article explores the growing abundance of misinformation in the public sphere, how it influences people, and how to counter it. We show how misinformation can have an adverse impact on society, for example by predisposing parents to make disadvantageous medical decisions for their children. We argue that for countermeasures to be effective, they must be informed by the larger political, technological, and societal context. The post-truth world arguably emerged as a result of societal mega-trends, such as a decline in social capital, growing economic inequality, increased polarization, declining trust in science, and an increasingly fractionated media landscape. Considered against the background of those overarching trends, misinformation in the post-truth era can no longer be considered solely an isolated failure of individual cognition that can be corrected with appropriate communication tools. Rather, it should also consider the influence of alternative epistemologies that defy conventional standards of evidence. Responses to the post-truth era must therefore include technological solutions that incorporate psychological principles, an interdisciplinary approach that we describe as "technocognition." Technocognition uses findings from cognitive science to inform the design of information architectures that encourage the dissemination of high-quality information and that discourage the spread of misinformation.
Objective: To determine how counselors' attachment anxiety and avoidance related to congruence between counselors' and clients' Working alliance (WA) ratings. Congruence strength was defined as the ...regression coefficient for clients' WA ratings predicting counselors' WA ratings. Directional bias was defined as the difference in level between counselors' and clients' WA ratings. Method: Twenty-seven graduate student counselors completed an attachment measure and they and their 64 clients completed a measure of WA early in therapy. The truth-and-bias analysis was adapted to analyze the data. Results: As hypothesized counselors' WA ratings were significantly and positively related to clients' WA ratings. Also as hypothesized, counselors' WA ratings were significantly lower than their clients' WA ratings (directional bias). Increasing counselor attachment anxiety was related to increasing negative directional bias; as counselors' attachment anxiety increased the difference between counselors and clients WA ratings became more negative. There was a significant interaction between counselor attachment anxiety and congruence strength in predicting counselor WA ratings. There was a stronger relationship between client WA ratings and counselor WA ratings for counselors low versus high in attachment anxiety. Conclusion: Counselors' attachment anxiety is realted to their ability to accurately percieve their clients' WA.
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