There is an ‘I’ in truth: How salient identities shape dynamic perceptions of truth

Abstract

This research examined the hypothesis that people judge as true those claims aligned with the normative content of their salient social identities. In Experiment 1a, participants’ social identities were manipulated by assigning them to ‘inductive-thinker’ and ‘intuitive-thinker’ groups. Participants subsequently made truth judgements about aphorisms randomly associated with ‘science’ and ‘popular wisdom’. Those with salient inductive-thinker social identities judged science-based claims as more truthful than popular wisdom-based claims to a greater extent than those with salient intuitive-thinker social identities. Experiment 1b was a preregistered replication, with additional conditions eliminating an alternative semantic-priming explanation. In Experiment 2, American Conservatives and Liberals judged as more true claims associated with the ideological content of their social identities. This difference was attenuated through a manipulation that framed participants as more moderate than they had originally indicated. Overall, these experiments suggest an identity-truth malleability, such that making salient specific social identities can lead to related perceptions of truth normatively aligned with those identities.