On the limits of judgmental correction: Differences of fluency effects in bias awareness and naïve theories about bias direction.
Final Report Abstract
In this research project, we investigated how processing fluency, the mental ease of processing a stimulus, influences various judgments and under what circumstances individuals can correct this often unwanted influence. Initially, we compared the truth effect, which is the increased subjective perception of truth resulting from simple repetition of information, with spontaneous aesthetic judgments (whether something is perceived as beautiful). It was found that different ways of increasing stimulus fluency selectively influence these two types of judgments. Visual fluency (manipulated by color contrast) plays a greater role in aesthetic judgments than in truth judgments, and semantic fluency (manipulated by repetition of synonymous information) plays a greater role in truth judgments than in aesthetic judgments. Therefore, different judgments are specifically susceptible to certain sources of fluency. This suggests that to avoid unwanted fluency effects in specific judgments, individuals should be sensitized to specific fluency sources. In aesthetic judgments, possible repetition of the stimuli to be judged does not need corrective attention, but in truth judgments, it does. Furthermore, we examined the psychological mechanisms underlying the unwanted effect of pronounceability, another type of fluency. It was found that the pronounceability of fictional personal names, although completely irrelevant to the corresponding judgments such as liking, trustworthiness, and safecty, has a strong, robust, and replicable biasing effect under various contextual conditions, framings, and even under positive and negative moods. Participants were unable to correct this pronounceability effect in their judgment. This indicates that the pronounceability of words (especially names) has a massive and difficult-to-control psychological effect, which plays a role in a variety of (applied) contexts (advertising, job application processes, credibility of medications, etc.). Regarding the ability to correct unwanted fluency distortions, we investigated the so-called in-out effect, where consonantal articulation places systematically migrate forward or backward in the mouth in stimulus words. Enormous experimental effort was made here to meet all the psychological conditions identified in the literature that are necessary for successful judgment correction. In the most extreme condition, participants were extensively briefed on the underlying effect and its direction of action. Participants were successfully trained to identify the fluency source of articulation direction, and money was offered as an incentive for judgment correction. However, in none of the implemented judgment correction conditions could participants even remotely correct the effect of articulation direction in stimulus words, that is, the in-out effect. This demonstrates the remarkably strong and unavoidable effect of this subtle type of fluency.
Publications
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Truth is in the mind, but beauty is in the eye: Fluency effects are moderated by a match between fluency source and judgment dimension.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(8), 1587-1596.
Vogel, Tobias; Silva, Rita R.; Thomas, Aurelia & Wänke, Michaela
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Mood and fluency: The case of pronunciation ease, liking and trust. European Journal of Social Psychology, 54(3), 643-657.
Löffler, Charlotte S.; Naber, Dörte; Weiger, Naomi; Zürn, Michael K.; Silva, Rita R.; Ingendahl, Moritz & Topolinski, Sascha
