SYM 06: When liars are considered honest: the crucial role of epistemic beliefs in understanding the post-truth world
| Thursday, June 12, 2025 |
| 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM |
| Lockewood Suite |
Overview
Symposium organiser: Stephan Lewandowsky
Details
People’s subjective perception of truth or honesty tends to fall into one of two perspectives: an accuracy-based perspective that relies on data and evidence, and an intuition-based perspective that relies on feelings and sincerity of belief. With the rise of "alternative facts," the epistemic status of an accuracy-based perspective has increasingly been questioned, and personal beliefs and emotions are often elevated to the same level of relevance as empirical evidence. Therefore, merely appealing to factual accuracy is no longer sufficient to combat misinformation. This symposium explores the implications of people’s different perspectives on truth and honesty.
Speaker
Dr Christoph Abels
Post-doctoral Fellow
Department Of Psychology, University Of Potsdam
TRUTH IS WHAT HAPPENS WHILE YOU'RE BUSY BELIEVING SOMETHING ELSE: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERING ONTOLOGIES OF TRUTH ON TRUTH DISCERNMENT
Symposium Presentation
Truth can be viewed through two lenses: evidence-based (science, data) or intuition-based (gut feeling). With the rise of "alternative facts," personal beliefs and emotions are increasingly valued alongside empirical evidence, making them, for some, equally significant. As a result, simply appealing to facts is insufficient to combat misinformation. This study tests inoculation interventions tailored to individuals' understanding of truth, whether evidence- or intuition-based, using the Epistemic Evidence Intuition Scale (E2IS). We report on experiments examining how these tailored interventions influence veracity judgments of news headlines and explore the role of truth perception in misinformation vulnerability.
Paper Number
541
Prof Stephan Lewandowsky
Professor Of Cognitive Science
University Of Bristol
Honest Liars and the Threat to Democracy
Symposium Presentation
Fact-checkers recorded over 30,000 false or misleading claims by Donald Trump during his first presidency, yet many Republican voters still saw him as honest. This paradox can be explained through the lens of two views of honesty: “fact-speaking” (accuracy-focused) and “belief-speaking” (sincerity-focused). Analyzing Twitter/X, I show that belief-speaking politicians spread more low-quality information than fact-speaking politicians. When we encourage fact-speaking in experiments, it reduces misinformation acceptance and increases support for democratic norms. These findings suggest that promoting fact-based honesty can help protect democracy.
Paper Number
551
Prof Markus Appel
Professor
University of Wurzburg
COROLLARIES AND CONSEQUENCES OF EPISTEMIC BELIEFS
Symposium Presentation
People differ in their epistemic beliefs, i.e., their worldviews about how one can and should construct knowledge and reality. In several studies, we tested the assumption that post-truth epistemic beliefs (high Faith in Intuition for Facts, low Need for Evidence, and pronounced beliefs that Truth is Political) are– at least to some extent– expressions of the Dark Factor of Personality and predictive of higher endorsement of conspiracy beliefs, problematic health behavior (e.g., COVID-19 vaccination refusal) and worse fake news discernment. In a recent line of research, we examined epistemic beliefs in the context of climate change denial and environmental behavior.
Paper Number
542
Prof jane suiter
Professor
DCU
Discussant
Paper Number
0
