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Evidence that photos promote rosiness for claims about the future
Eryn J. Newman
1,2
&Tanj e e m A z a d
3
&D. Stephen Lindsay
3
&Maryanne Garry
1
#Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2016
Abstract When people rapidly judge the truth of claims
about the present or the past, a related but nonprobative photo
can produce Btruthiness,^an increase in the perceived truth of
those claims (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay,
2012). What we do not know is the extent to which
nonprobative photos cause truthiness for the future. We ad-
dressed this issue in four experiments. In each experiment,
people judged the truth of claims that the price of certain
commodities (such as manganese) would increase (or de-
crease). Half of the time, subjects saw a photo of the commod-
ity paired with the claim. Experiments 1Aand1Bproduceda
Brosiness^bias: Photos led people to believe positive claims
about the future but had very little effect on people’sbeliefin
negative claims. In Experiment 2, rosiness occurred for both
close and distant future claims. In Experiments 3Aand3B, we
tested whether rosiness was tied to the perceived positivity of
a claim. Finally, in Experiments 4A and 4B, we tested the
rosiness hypothesis and found that rosiness was unique to
claims about the future: When people made the same judg-
ments about the past, photos produced the usual truthiness
pattern for both positive and negative claims. Considered all
together, our data fit with the idea that photos may operate as
hypothesis-confirming evidence for people’stendencytoan-
ticipate rosy future outcomes.
Keywords Truthiness .Photographs .Fluency .Future
thinking
People’s predictions about the future are colored by cognitive
biases. In the face of uncertainty, we often ignore base rates,
overvalue resemblances, and overrely on our emotions.
Perhaps the best known of these pervasive biases hinges on
cognitive availability: Future scenarios seem more likely if,
for example, they are easy to imagine (Jacoby, Kelley, &
Dywan, 1989; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974; see also Alter
& Oppenheimer, 2009, for the similar notion of Bretrieval
fluency^). The contents of the imagined scenario are likely
nonprobative: They probably do not reliably reveal the likeli-
hood that the scenario will actually occur. But people do
sometimes use the ease with which they can imagine or think
about a scenario as a gauge to its likelihood (Szpunar &
Schacter, 2013; see also Unkelbach, 2006,2007). In one
study, people tended to think they were more likely to contract
a disease with easy-to-imagine symptoms (headache or low
energy) than one with difficult-to-imagine symptoms
(inflamed liver or a malfunctioning nervous system;
Sherman, Cialdini, Schwartzman, & Reynolds, 1985). In an-
other study, people on average expressed more interest in vis-
iting travel destinations that were easier to imagine (Petrova &
Cialdini, 2005). When people can easily imagine
nonprobative information about the future, they often mistak-
enly construe that information and the ease of simulating that
future event as probative. And so, manipulations that help
people imagine a future scenario more easily should make that
future seem more likely. Photographs are especially powerful
tools that help people imagine. To what extent can
*Eryn J. Newman
erynnewm@usc.edu
1
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
2
Mind and Society Center, Department of Psychology, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA
3
University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
DOI 10.3758/s13421-016-0652-5
Published online: 19 September 2016
(2018) 46:1223–1233
Mem Cogn
photographs make future scenarios seem true? That is the
question we addressed here.
Photographs promote ease of imagination
We know that photographs—even nonprobative ones, which
do not provide any evidence that an event has happened—can
lead people to falsely remember their past. In one study, sub-
jects heard three descriptions of childhood events, two true
and one false (Lindsay, Hagen, Read, Wade, & Garry, 2004).
The false description was about the subject and a friend sneak-
ing Slime—the gooey, sticky children’stoy—into their grade
school teacher’s desk and later getting in trouble. The sub-
jects’task was to recall as much as possible about each event.
Over a week, one group received a verbal suggestions, but
another group received the suggestions plus a copy of that
school-year’s class photo (supplied to the researchers by the
subjects’parents). By the end of the week, 45 % of the
Bsuggestion^people reported something about the Slime ep-
isode, as compared with 78 % of the Bsuggestion plus photo^
people. Moreover, two-thirds of those who also saw the photo
were judged by raters to have reported false memories that
were marked by high confidence (see Blandón‐Gitlin,
Pezdek, Lindsay, & Hagen, 2009, for a content analysis of
true and suggested events).
We can consider these findings in the language of the
source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, &
Lindsay, 1993; Lindsay, 2008,2014). Source monitoring
helps us understand how people decide whether a particular
mental event really happened, and from what source it came:
Is it something one simply imagined, or something one really
experienced? When mental products such as thoughts, im-
ages, and feelings come to mind easily, are full of sensory
detail—such as vivid, concrete images—and leave little re-
cord of cognitive operations that might otherwise point to an
internal origin, people typically attribute those mental prod-
ucts to real experience. The results from Lindsay and col-
leagues’(2004) findings fit with the idea thatthe nonprobative
class photo made it easier for subjects to generate thoughts and
images about themselves, their friends, their teacher, and the
event itself. Coupled with a bias to seek confirming informa-
tion (Nickerson, 1998) and a gradual loss of source memory
over the week-long procedure (see Lindsay, 2008), subjects
may have construed these mental products as evidence that the
suggested event really happened.
We also know from recent work that nonprobative photos
can more rapidly nudge people to find associated claims true
(Fenn, Newman, Pezdek, & Garry, 2013; Newman, Garry,
Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, 2012). In this paradigm, peo-
ple quickly judge a series of trivia claims (The liquid metal
inside a thermometer is magnesium)astrueorfalse.
Sometimes the claims appear with a nonprobative photo (such
as a thermometer), but other times the claims appear alone.
The general finding is that when people make rapid judgments
about the truth of a claim, nonprobative but relevant photos
nudge them toward believing that claim—an effect known as
Btruthiness.^This Btruthiness^research, too, fits with the idea
that nonprobative photos help people generate thoughts and
images related to a claim. In turn, a bias to confirm a claim
may encourage people to construe these mental products and
the ease of generating them as evidence that the claim is true
(Newman et al., 2012;Newmanetal.,2015). Truthiness re-
search also suggests that nonprobative photos bias judgments
about the past and present by what seem to be similar process-
es—processes like those we know cause future scenarios to
seem true.
To investigate the degree to which nonprobative photo-
graphs produce truthiness for future scenarios, we asked the
people in our present experiments to make judgments about
each of a large set of commodities, such as gabardine, ben-
zene, and thyme. For each commodity, one group quickly
responded Btrue^or Bfalse^to the scenario BThis commodity
is likely to have increased in price three months from today.^
To address the possible counterexplanation that people might
think that commodities with photos are more valuable, and
thus would increase in price, we asked another group to re-
spond to the scenario BThis commodity is likely to have de-
creased in price three months from today.^In both conditions,
half of the scenarios appeared with a photo of the commodity.
On the basis of our review of the memory and future judg-
ments literatures, we might expect that nonprobative photos
would produce truthiness for the future. Indeed, the source-
monitoringframework accommodates the idea that people use
similar approaches when judging past and present outcomes to
decide the likelihood that a particular future event will really
happen. That is, when thoughts, images, and feelings about
future events come to mind easily, are full of sensory details,
and are low on markers of cognitive operations, people typi-
cally decide that the future event is more likely to really hap-
pen (see Johnson & Sherman, 1990, and Schacter, Addis, &
Buckner, 2007, for related views). Thus, we might expect that
nonprobative photos would operate in similar ways for judg-
ments about the past, present, and future, making related
thoughts, feelings, and images spring to mind easily and serv-
ing as evidence for claims regardless of the direction of time.
On the other hand, we might expect that photos would not
influence people’s judgments about the future. After all,
photos record the past, not the future. Although it makes sense
that people may gather evidence from a photo to make judg-
ments about a past event, it makes much less sense to gather
evidence from a photo to make judgments about a future
event.
Below we report how we determined our sample sizes, all
data exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures used in
our experiments. Decisions about sample size and measures
(2018) 46:1223–1233
Mem Cogn
1224
were made prior to the data analysis. The data (both the initial
raw data and the more processed data files) from the studies
reported here are posted on the first author’s ResearchGate
profile, as are copies of the materials and of the programs used
to present them.
Experiment 1A and 1B
Method
Subjects In Experiment 1A, 81 students from Victoria
University of Wellington participated in the study for course
credit. In Experiment 1B, 76 students from the University of
Victoria participated in the study for optional bonus points. If
the effect sizes of photos are comparable for past and future
judgments, then on the basis of our prior research, the effects
should have similar precisions when Ns were in the mid 70s,
so that is what we set out to test; the final Ns varied depending
on no-show rates (Newman et al., 2012).
Design We used a 2 (Photo: yes, no) × 2 (Claim: increase,
decrease) mixed design, manipulating the presence of a photo
within subjects.
Materials and procedure We told subjects that they would
seeaseriesofcommodities(Braw materials or goods that have
some value and are often used to make other products^). Their
task was to decide, for each commodity, whether the claim
BThis commodity is likely to have increased in price three
months from today^was true or false. Half of the subjects
made the same decision for the claim BThis commodity is
likely to have decreased in price three months from today.^
To reduce a potential tendency to assume that prices typically
increase over time, we told subjects that commodity prices
often increase and decrease week to week and month to
month.
Subjects saw 30 commodities, presented one at a time
using the Superlab software. We developed this list by
selecting nouns from the MRC Psycholinguistic word data-
base (http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.
au/school/MRCDatabase/uwa_mrc.htm) that, given our
broad definition, are plausible commodities. We selected
nouns that fell at the lower end of the familiarity scale and
the upper end of the imagery scale (see the supplementary
materials for our list of nouns), so although the nouns were
unfamiliar, they were relatively easy to picture if you knew
what they were, and were easily represented in a photo
(familiarity: M= 343.37, SD =71.01,range=199–442;
imagery: M=492.57,SD = 72.62, range = 402–627;
database range = 100–700).
We told subjects that sometimes they would see a photo
with the commodity and sometimes they would not, and we
showed them gold as an example in both the photo and no-
photo versions. The photos always depicted the commodity,
and all of the photos used in the experiments reported here can
be found on the first author’s ResearchGate profile. We did not
provide any instructions about how subjects should use the
photos; instead, we said Bdon’t try to analyze and puzzle
things out, just go with your gut feel or hunch,^and that they
should decide the truth of the claim as quickly as possible,
within a couple of seconds. The names of the commodities
appeared one at a time, in large black font against a white
background. Half of these names appeared with a photo
depicting the commodity (see Fig. 1). The order of commod-
ities was randomized anew for each subject and
counterbalanced so that each commodity appeared equally
often with and without a photo.
In Experiment 1B we replicated Experiment 1A, except
that we increased the number of commodities to 68 and broad-
ened the range of familiarity and imagery (familiarity: M=
330.79, SD = 127.79, range = 103–518; imagery: M= 430.49,
SD = 145.79, range = 162–649; database range = 100–700).
Results and discussion
Our primary aim was to determine the extent to which
nonprobative photographs can make future scenarios seem
true. To answer this question, we calculated the proportion
of times each subject said claims were true, grouped those
responses according to whether those scenarios had appeared
with or without a nonprobative photo; the results are displayed
in Fig. 2. The black bars show the responses to commodities
that appeared with photos; the gray bars show the responses
when commodities appeared alone. In addition, the left bars
show the pattern of responses for the scenario in which com-
modities would increase in price, and the right bars show the
pattern for the scenario in which commodities would decrease
in price.
As the figure shows, nonprobative photos produced
truthiness for the future. That is, relative to the no-photo con-
dition, subjects responded Btrue^more often to future scenar-
ios that appeared with a photo, F(1, 79) = 4.61, p= .03, mean
difference = .05 (i.e., a 5 % raw effect size), 95 % confidence
interval (CI) [.004, .09]. The photo effect in Experiment 1A
was small (and the lower bound of the CI very close to 0), so it
is reassuring that a photo effect was also obtained in
Experiment 1B, F(1, 74) = 16.23, p< .01, mean difference =
.07, 95 % CI [.03, .10]. In Experiment 1B, we also found a
marginal tendency toward a main effect of claim, suggesting
that people more often agreed with the Bincrease^claim than
with the Bdecrease^claim, F(1, 74) = 4.03, p= .05, mean
difference = .06, 95 % CI [.004, .12]. This trend suggests a
bias toward assuming that prices tend to increase. No signifi-
cant Photo × Claim interaction emerged in either Experiment
1Aor1B, both Fs < 1.32, but the pattern suggests that photos
(2018) 46:1223–1233
Mem Cogn 1225
exerted more of an influence on the Bincrease^than on the
Bdecrease^claim (a pattern that we replicated in subsequent
experiments). Taken together, our findings fit with recent re-
search showing that nonprobative photos can promote the
truthiness of associated claims (Fenn et al., 2013; Newman
et al., 2012;Newmanetal.,2015)
Did subjects have any insight into the way that photos
biased them? When we asked subjects at the end of
Experiment 1A how the photographs influenced their deci-
sions,
1
52 % of the people said the photographs helped them
understand what the commodity was, 10 % told us that the
photo helped them imagine the commodity, and only 10 %
reported that the photo added credibility to the claim (another
28 % said that the photo did nothing or gave a different ex-
planation, such as that the photo made them respond more
slowly). Thus, the majority of subjects reported that the photos
boosted their understanding or helped them picture the com-
modity—a belief that fits with a fluency account in which
subjects may have misattributed the ease of understanding or
imagining the commodity as a sign that the claim was true
(Jacoby, Woloshyn, & Kelley, 1989;Schwarz,2010).
Indeed, we know that other manipulations that add context
information, such as words that help describe a target, can lead
people to conclude that an associated claim is true. For in-
stance, a claim about Nick Cave seems more true when his
name is accompanied by words such as Bwhite male, musi-
cian, microphone^—perhaps because the words (although
nonprobative) help people understand who he is, and this pro-
duces a feeling of conceptual fluency (Newman et al., 2012;
Whittlesea, 1993).
Although we found that nonprobative photos produced
truthiness for the future, there are at least two reasons to expect
that photos would not influence judgments about a more im-
mediate future. First, events that are closer in time are more
detailed and concrete, and thus easier for people to bring to
mind and imagine (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2008;Hansen&
Wänke, 2010; Trope & Liberman, 2003,2010). Perhaps when
claims are close in time an accompanying photo would not
add anything because people would find the claim easy to
imagine and comprehend (Schwarz, 2010; Sherman et al.,
1985;Unkelbach,2007). Second, in the context of the com-
modity market, people may have an implicit belief that prices
do not vary within a matter of weeks. If so, then we might
predict that photos would not influence people’s beliefs about
claims concerning near future relative to distant future events.
Experiment 2
Method
Subjects In Experiment 2, we used the Amazon Mechanical
Turk (MTurk; www.mturk.com)torecruit200subjects.
2
Because of a quirk in the way MTurk assigns subject slots,
184 subjects completed the experiment (similar deviations
follow in the other experiments we report here). These
people received a $0.60 Amazon credit.
Design We used a 2 (Photo: yes, no) × 2 (Temporal distance:
near, far) × 2 (Claim; increase, decrease) mixed design, ma-
nipulating the presence of a photo within subjects.
Procedure We used the same method and materials as in
Experiment 1B, except that we altered the claims so that our
subjects responded to a claim set in the near or the distant
future. People either responded to the distant claim that
BThis commodity is likely to have increased [decreased] in
price three months from today^or a temporally close claim
that BThis commodity is likely to have increased [decreased]
in price three weeks from today.^This time manipulation is
within the range commonly used in the mental-construal liter-
ature (for reviews, see Trope & Liberman, 2003,2010). We
counterbalanced so that people responded to the three months/
three weeks and increase/decrease claims equally often, and
each commodity equally often appeared with and without a
photo.
1
We had 68 responses to this follow-up question.
2
We determined the Non the basis of previous research with photos and
past judgments on Mturk (e.g., Newman et al., 2015).
Fig. 1 Example of commodity names appearing either with or without a photo. Photo credit: http://notanminerals.com/Pr-Manganese.html#sthash.
ozPLy1of.dpuf
(2018) 46:1223–1233
Mem Cogn
1226
Results and discussion
As Fig. 3shows, photos produced truthiness for both near and
far future claims, F(1, 180) = 13.88, p< .01, mean difference =
.04, 95 % CI [.02, .07]. Moreover, people thought claims
about the far future were more likely to be true than near future
claims; indeed, people tended to disbelieve claims set in the
near future (the bars on the left side of the graph all fall below
50 %), a finding that fits with the idea that people expect less
fluctuation over short intervals, F(1, 180) = 12.99, p<.01,
mean difference = –.09, 95 % CI [–.14, –.04,]. As in the
marginal tendency observed in Experiment 1B, we found that
people agreed more with the increase than with the Bdecrease^
claim, F(1, 180) = 5.08, p= .03, mean difference = .06, 95 %
CI [.01, .11]. Finally, the pattern in which the photos exerted a
directionally stronger influence on the Bincrease^claim in
Experiment 1A emerged as a significant interaction in this
experiment: We found significant truthiness for the Bincrease^
claim, F(1, 180) = 15.03, p< .01, mean difference
Incr
=.08,
95 % CI [.05, .11], but not for the Bdecrease^claim, mean
difference
Decr
=.002,95%CI[–.03, .03].
Taken together, these data suggest that nonprobative photos
can promote the truthiness of claims about a future price in-
crease, even when people judge claims about the more imme-
diate future and when people have a low belief in the claims
they are judging (Fig. 3shows that people in the three-weeks
condition had lower belief in all of the claims). Put another
way, photos can also shift people’s belief in claims they tend to
think are false.
The finding that photos encouraged more truthiness for the
Bincrease^claim fits with two lines of research. First, it fits
with research showing that people tend to see the future
through Brose-colored^lenses: That is, they generate positive
future scenarios more quickly and remember imagined posi-
tive future scenarios better than negative ones (Newby-Clark
& Ross, 2003; Szpunar, Addis, & Schacter, 2012). Second, it
fits with research showing that people often interpret an expe-
rience of easy processing in a positive way—and so, a feeling
of fluency increases judgments of liking but not of disliking
and boosts evaluations of beauty but not of ugliness (Reber,
Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004; Winkielman, Schwarz, Reber,
& Fazendeiro, 2003; see also Harmon-Jones & Allen, 2001,
and cf. Westerman, Lanska, & Olds, 2015). These fluent ex-
periences are sometimes accompanied by physiological
markers of positive affect (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz,
1998; Seamon, McKenna, & Binder, 1998; Topolinski,
Likowski, Weyers, & Strack, 2008;Winkielman&
Cacioppo, 2001).
These ideas suggest that photos of commodities may have
given rise to a positive experience of processing fluency that
in turn enhanced people’s tendency to view the future as rosy.
It may be that subjects made their judgments from the per-
spective of a buyer, rather than a seller, and hence tended to
evaluate future price increases as positive. This explanation
could account for the tendency in Experiment 1B and both
conditions of Experiment 2for the effect of photos to be larger
for Bincrease^than for Bdecrease^judgments. In Experiments
3A and B, we examined this positivity explanation more di-
rectly. In Experiment 3A, we simply asked people whether
they thought the Bincrease^and Bdecrease^claims felt positive
or negative. In Experiment 3B, we took a different approach
and altered the claims so that the interpretation of the
Fig. 3 Experiment 2: Proportions of Btrue^responses for claims that
commodities would increase or decrease in price in three weeks or three
months, presented with or without photos. Error bars represent 95 %
within-subjects confidence intervals.
Fig. 2 Experiments 1A (top) and 1B (bottom): Proportions of Btrue^
responses for claims that commodities would increase or decrease in
price, presented with or without photos. Error bars represent 95 %
within-subjects confidence intervals.
(2018) 46:1223–1233
Mem Cogn 1227
Bincrease^or Bdecrease^claims was clearly positive (making
a profit) or negative (making a loss) for the subject. If we
found that photos influence judgments for Bprofit^but not
for Bloss^claims, this would be better evidence that the influ-
ence of photos was tied to positive/rosy future claims.
Experiment 3A
Method
Subjects Again, we used MTurk to recruit 253 subjects.
3
Each
subject received $0.10 Amazon credit for participating in this
shorter experiment.
Design We used a one-way between-subjects design (Claim:
increase, decrease).
Procedure The procedure was similar to that of Experiment
1B—subjects saw the Bincrease^or the Bdecrease^claim, and
then made judgments about whether that claim was true or
false for each commodity that appeared on the screen—except
that subjects only evaluated ten commodities, selected at ran-
dom from the full set of 68. The commodities task served to
give subjects a flavor of the judgment task. After subjects had
completed the ten true/false judgments, they were asked to
rate the affective valence of the claim they had just judged
from 1 = negative to 6 = positive.
Results and discussion
We classified people’s responses according to whether they
responded to the Bincrease^or Bdecrease^claim. We found
that subjects rated the Bincrease^claim as more positive (M=
4.56, 95 % CI [4.36, 4.76]) than the Bdecrease^claim (M=
3.39, 95 % CI [3.18, 3.59]), t(250) = 7.99, p< .001, mean
difference = 1.17, 95 % CI of the difference [0.89, 1.46], a
pattern consistent with the idea that photos promote truth for
rosy future claims.
Experiment 3B
Method
Subjects We used MTurk to recruit 220 subjects. Each sub-
jects received $0.60 Amazon credit for participating.
Design We used a 2 (Photo: yes, no) × 2 (Relevance: self-
relevant, not self-relevant) × 2 (Price: up, down) mixed de-
sign, manipulating the presence of a photo within subjects.
Procedure We used the same method and materials as in
Experiment 2, except that we altered the claims so that half
the subjects evaluated a claim that was personally relevant.
That is, people either responded to the standard claim, BThis
commodity is likely to have increased [decreased] in price
three months from today^or to a self-relevant claim, BIf I
buy this commodity today, then three months from now I will
have made a profit [loss].^We counterbalanced so that people
responded to the profit/loss and increase/decrease claims
equally often, and each commodity appeared equally often
with and without a photo.
Results and discussion
As Fig. 4shows, we replicated the finding that photos signif-
icantly promoted truthiness for positive but not for negative
claims. We also found that this pattern held for self-relevant
claims, which is a stronger test of our positivity hypothesis.
Although people responded Btrue^equally often to the
Bdecrease^and Bloss^claims, they responded Btrue^more
to the Bincrease^than to the Bprofit^claim. That is, we ob-
served a Photo × Price interaction, F(1, 216) = 51.10, p<.01
(photo vs. no photo: mean difference
Pos
= .11, 95 % CI [.08,
.13]; mean difference
Neg
=–.03, 95 % CI [–.06, –.01]), and a
significant Relevance × Price interaction, F(1, 216) = 7.47, p=
.01 (truth ratings for self-relevant vs. not self-relevant: mean
difference
Pos
=–.08, 95 % CI [–.13, –.02]; mean difference
Neg
=.04,95%CI[–.03, .10]). We found no other interactions, all
Fs<1.
The data from Experiments 3Aand3B support the idea
that nonprobative photos promote rosiness.And
Experiment 3B shows that photos increased the truth of
positive (but not of negative) future outcomes. This may
be due to a mechanism whereby photos facilitate people’s
bias to think of positive future events, but these data also
fit with a general effect in the fluency literature, in which
fluency tends to increase judgments about positive but not
about negative attributes (e.g., Reber et al., 2004;
Winkielman et al., 2003). So it is possible that photos
make positive future claims seem true because of the gen-
eral tendency to experience fluency as positive, rather
than because of a rose-colored bias in future thinking. If
it is the case that photos enhance positive claims about the
future largely because people interpret fluency in a posi-
tive way, then we should see a similar pattern for claims
about the past. To address this hypothesis, in Experiment
4we asked people to make judgments about both the
future and the past.
3
We posted 200 subject slots, but because they were in multiple batches,
more subjects participated than anticipated.
(2018) 46:1223–1233
Mem Cogn
1228
Experiments 4A and 4B
Method
Subjects We usedMTurk to recruit 218 subjects. Each subject
received $0.60 Amazon credit for participating.
Design We used a 2 (Photo: yes, no) × 2 (Time: past, future) ×
2 (Price: worth more, worth less) mixed design, manipulating
the presence of a photo within subjects.
Procedure We used the same method and materials as in
Experiment 2, except that we altered the claims slightly so
that subjects either responded to claims about the future
(e.g., BThree months from now this commodity will be worth
more [less] than it is today^) or about the past (e.g., BThree
months ago this commodity was worth more [less] than it is
today^). We counterbalanced so that people responded to the
past/future and Bworth more^/Bworth less^claims equally of-
ten, and each commodity appeared equally often with and
without a photo.
Results and discussion
As Fig. 5shows, we replicated the finding that for claims
about the future, nonprobative photos promoted rosiness.
But for claims about the past, truthiness was unrelated to va-
lence: That is, photos promoted the truthiness for both positive
and negative claims.
We observed a Photo × Time × Price interaction, F(1, 214)
=5.66,p= .02 (future claims: mean difference
More
=.08,95%
CI [.03, .12], mean difference
Less
= .01, 95 % CI [–.03, .05];
past claims: mean difference
More
= .06, 95 % CI [.02, .10],
mean difference
Less
= .09, 95 % CI [.05, .13]). We found no
other interactions, all Fs < 1. Considered together, these data
suggest that something isindeed special about futureclaims—
that photos produce rosiness for judgments about the future,
but general truthiness for claims about the past.
Because this pattern with the past claims was novel and
different from our findings in Experiments 1–3,wereplicated
Experiment 4A. We used the same materials and increased our
MTurk sample size by a factor of 3. In Experiment 4B, we
found the same pattern of results—including, most notably,
the key Photo × Time × Price interaction, F(1, 668) = 8.34, p<
.01 (future claims: mean difference
More
= .11, 95 % CI [.08,
.13], mean difference
Less
= .01, 95 % CI [–.03, .04]; past
claims: mean difference
More
= .07, 95 % CI [.05, .09], mean
difference
Less
= .04, 95 % CI [.02, .07]).
We then used the data from Experiments 4A and 4Bto
arrive at a more precise estimate of the truthiness effect sizes
for both the Bworth more^and Bworth less^claims when set in
the future or the past. We conducted two random-effects
Fig. 4 Experiment 3B: Proportions of Btrue^responses for positive and negative claims about commodities that were either self-relevant or not self-
relevant, presented with or without photos. Error bars represent 95 % within-subjects confidence intervals.
Fig. 5 Experiment 4A: Proportions of Btrue^responses for positive and
negative commodity claims set in the future or the past, presented with or
without photos. Error bars represent 95 % within-subjects confidence
intervals.
(2018) 46:1223–1233
Mem Cogn 1229
model mini-meta-analyses (Cumming, 2012), and display
those data in Fig. 6. The top part of the figure shows the first
analysis, which focused on the Bworth more^claims. We com-
pared the effects for future and past truthiness, and calculated
estimated raw effect sizes of 0.10, 95 % CI [0.08, 0.12], for the
future and 0.07, 95 % CI [0.05, 0.09], for the past. As Fig. 6
shows, the truthiness for the future was trivially larger: esti-
mated raw difference –0.03, 95 % CI [–0.06, –0.005].
The bottom part of the figure shows the second analysis,
which focused on the Bworth less^claim. We again compared
the truthiness effect sizes for future and past claims, and cal-
culated estimated raw effect sizes of 0.01, 95 % CI [–0.03,
0.05], for the future, and 0.06, 95 % CI [0.03, 0.10], for the
past. As Fig. 6shows, the estimated raw effect sizes for future
truthiness plausibly include the possibility that photos do not
promote truthiness, whereas the estimate for the past condition
does not. In addition, the overall difference between the sizes
of the photo effects across the future and past conditions
shows that there is plausibly no difference, 0.05, 95 % CI [–
0.01, 0.10].
General discussion
Photos, like memory, are a record of the past. But just as recent
work has shown that we draw on the past to imagine the future
(Addis, Wong, & Schacter, 2007; Suddendorf & Corballis,
2007; Szpunar, 2010; Szpunar, Watson, & McDermott,
2007; cf. Johnson & Sherman, 1990), we found that people
drew on photos to predict the future. Across seven experi-
ments, our data tell a consistent story: Photos promoted rosi-
ness for future events. This finding fits with a growing body of
work showing that people tend to see future events through
rose-colored lenses (Sharot, Riccardi, Raio, & Phelps, 2007;
Szpunar et al., 2012;Taylor&Brown,1988; Weinstein, 1980;
cf. Szpunar & Schacter, 2013). If people are biased to antici-
pate positive future outcomes, it makes sense that they would
use photos as hypothesis-confirming evidence for positive but
not for negative claims (see the confirmation bias; e.g.,
Nickerson, 1998). Indeed, in each experiment, the confidence
intervals of the effect sizes for the negative future claims in-
cluded zero as a plausible value (with the exception of Exp.
3B, in which a negative or close-to-zero effect was plausible).
Although our results are consistent with the literature on
cognitive fluency, mental construal, and the source-
monitoring framework (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009;
Hansen & Wänke, 2010; Johnson et al., 1993;Lindsay,
2008), there are alternative explanations for our findings.
One possibility is that photos did not boost fluency nor foster
the ability to imagine a claim, but that subjects used a rule in
which they assumed that photos lent credibility to the claims.
But our results do not square with this account: If people
suspected that photos lent credibility to a claim, we should
have seen truthiness for both the Bincrease^and Bdecrease^
claims. We did not see that pattern; photos had the most pro-
nounced effect on positive claims, and a negligible effect on
negative claims. Only when we asked people to make judg-
ments about the past did photos produce truthiness for both
types of claims. Moreover, when we asked people at the end
of Experiment 1A about how the photos may have influenced
their answers, the large majority of our subjects reported that
the photo helped them understand what each commodity
was—a finding that is consistent with the idea that photos
made it easier for people to imagine the claim at hand.
A second alternative account of our effects is the possibility
that the photos somehow made the commodities seem more
valuable. Such a mechanism might explain why we saw an
increase in perceived truth for the positive and not for the
negative claims. There are several reasons why we do not
think the value mechanism can explain our findings. First,
our photos simply depicted the commodity on its own, with-
out packaging or advertising (e.g., a hunk of raw manganese),
and thus should not have conveyed information about its val-
ue. Second, if photos were a cue to value, we should have seen
Fig. 6 Forest plot of the photo effect sizes between conditions and across
experiments (Derzon & Alford, 2013). The top panel of the plot displays
the effects for photos inthe Bworth more^condition. The bottom panel of
the plot displays the effects for photos in the Bworth less^condition. The
location of each shape on the horizontal axis represents the raw effect
size—the difference between people’sBtrue^responses when they saw
claims paired with a photo versus when they saw claims without photos.
The lines extending on either side of a shape represent 95 % confidence
intervals(CIs; notethat a 95 % CI for a mean difference that excludes zero
will be significantly different from zero using null hypothesis significance
testing). Finally, within each panel on the plot, data that fall to the right of
the zero line show that people were inclined to say Btrue^more often
when they saw a photo—Brosiness^for future claims, and Btruthiness^
for past claims.
(2018) 46:1223–1233
Mem Cogn
1230
that photos increased belief in the positive claims and de-
creased belief in the negative claims. That is, people should
have taken the photos as evidence against claims that the
commodity would decrease in price. Instead, we found that
photos increased belief in positive claims and that they did
very little to influence people’s judgments about negative
claims. Finally, we found that when people made judgments
about the past, photos increased their belief in both positive
and negative claims—a pattern that is also inconsistent with
the idea that photos signal value.
Our data raise another intriguing question: Why is it
that photos produced similar effects for both positive and
negative past claims? We think there are at least two pos-
sibilities. First, we know that people think about the past
in a flexible way. We recall events as being either better
or worse than they really were, and we can come to re-
member both positive and negative events that never ac-
tually happened (Hyman & Pentland, 1996;Loftus&
Pickrell, 1995; Ross & Wilson, 2003; Schryer & Ross,
2012;Wadeetal.,2002). Second, that we detected
truthiness for the past may be a consequence of the ways
that the claims were worded. That is, it could be that the
photos inflated Byes^responses to questions about both
past increases and past decreases because subjects had
difficulty interpreting the implications of past increases
versus decreases.
A future increase in the price of a commodity represents a
gain, and a future decrease inits price represents a loss, both of
which seems naturally and intuitively positive or negative
(higher price = gain = good; lower price = loss = bad). In
contrast, if a commodity used to be worth less when you
bought it than it is today, that represents a gain, but it seems
less natural and intuitive (lower price = gain = good).
Likewise if it used to be worth more, that represents a loss
(higher price = loss = bad). So, it is possible that the conse-
quences of the past claims (whether you gained or lost money,
whether the outcome was good or bad) were difficult to extract
for subjects while they were making these quick judgments. If
so, that might have made the Bincrease^and Bdecrease^judg-
ments affectively comparable, and that, in turn, might have set
the stage for the truthiness pattern in which photos inflate
Byes^responses to both alternatives.
This pattern for past claims squares with an earlier finding
in which photos inflated Btrue^responses to two alternative
claims—either that Bthis famous person is alive^or that Bthis
famous person is dead^(Newman et al., 2012). In both of
these experiments, the apparent valence of the claim did not
alter the effect of photos. In contrast, yet-to-be published data
that are part of a thesis by Cardwell (2015), show that when
valence is described in a concrete way, past claims look more
like future claims. For instance, when people were asked to
evaluate relatively concrete claims about the past, such as
Bthis wine was rated [high] low in quality,^photos produced
truthiness for positive but not for negative claims (Cardwell,
2015). Further investigation of this intriguing pattern for past
claims will be an interesting avenue for future research.
Might photos influence high-stakes, real-world judgments
about financial investments? That is an empirical question, but
there is evidence that important financial decisions can be
sensitive to tangential factors such as ease of processing. For
example, Alter and Oppenheimer (2006)showedthatstock
names and ticker labels that are easy to pronounce tended to
perform better (especially in the short term) than those that are
difficult to pronounce. So, even when real money is involved,
surface-level features that logically should not bear on peo-
ple’s judgments sometimes do just that. These findings sug-
gest to us that our photo–rosiness effect may indeed have real-
world implications.
Across several experiments, nonprobative photos encour-
aged subjects to believe in positive claims about commodity
fluctuations. One of the many questions these findings raise is
whether we would see effects of rosiness for more autobio-
graphical future claims. For instance, would seeing a photo of
scuba diving lead people to predict they were more likely to
go diving in the future? Another interesting possibility is that
some people might show a reverse effect. If rosiness occurs
because people are biased to view the future in a positive light,
perhaps people who suffer from anxiety and depression would
be swayed into believing negative, more than positive, future
claims. These are just some of the future research avenues that
will stem from our findings. We encourage researchers to ex-
plore this new effect and its implications in the domain of
future thinking.
Author note E.J.N. is now at the Mind and Society Center, University
of Southern California, and T.A. is now in the Department of
Psychological Sciences, Kent State University. This research was sup-
ported by the New Zealand Government through the Marsden Fund,
administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand on behalf of the
Marsden Fund Council, and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada.
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