The Psychology of Lying and Deception Detection: People are more likely to believe information that is consistent with their own beliefs or consistent with the beliefs held by those in their social circle

Truth-Default Theory and the Psychology of Lying and Deception Detection. Timothy R. Levine. Current Opinion in Psychology, June 3 2022, 101380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101380

Highlights

• Truth-default theory posits that honesty is the starting place for human communication, and highlights people’s vulnerability to false and misleading information.

• Truth-default theory explains differences in deception detection outcomes across lab and everyday life situations.

• People are more likely to believe information that is consistent with their own beliefs, consistent with the beliefs held by those in their social circle, and that is ubiquitous in their communication environment.

Abstract: Truth-default theory offers an account of human deceptive communication where people are honest unless they have a motive to deceive and people passively believe others unless suspicion and doubt are actively triggered. The theory is argued to account for wide swings in vulnerability to deception in different types of situations in and out of the lab. Three moderators are advanced to account for differential vulnerability to political misinformation and disinformation. Own belief congruity, social congruence, and message repetition are argued to combine to affect the probability that implausible and refutable false information is accepted as true.

Keywords: MisinformationDisinformationConfirmation BiasSocial ProofLies