Competing cues: Older adults rely on knowledge in the face of fluency.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Consumers regularly encounter repeated false claims in political and marketing campaigns, but very little empirical work addresses their impact among older adults. Repeated statements feel easier to process, and thus more truthful, than new ones (i.e., illusory truth). When judging truth, older adults' accumulated general knowledge may offset this perception of fluency. In two experiments, participants read statements that contradicted information stored in memory; a post-experimental knowledge check confirmed what individual participants knew. Unlike young adults, older adults exhibited illusory truth only when they lacked knowledge about claims. This interaction between knowledge and fluency extends dual-process theories of aging. (PsycINFO Database Record
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Brashier, NM; Umanath, S; Cabeza, R; Marsh, EJ
Published Date
- June 2017
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 32 / 4
Start / End Page
- 331 - 337
PubMed ID
- 28333505
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC5476227
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1939-1498
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0882-7974
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1037/pag0000156
Language
- eng