title: “Truthiness: Going with your gut” author: Susan VanderPlas date: ‘2019-02-15’ slug: truthiness categories: [] tags: [] —

Graphics are incredibly useful information conduits, but what effects do extraneous graphics have on someone’s ability to evaluate factual statements? In this talk, I’ll discuss the “truthiness effect” and talk about what pictures and charts have to do with Stephen Colbert and science communication. I’ll discuss results from two cognitive psychology studies detailing the truthiness effect and some initial data from a study I’m conducting to explore whether this effect extends to statistical charts and graphics.

Slide link.

Papers:
McCabe, D. P., & Castel, A. D. (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107(1), 343–352.
Newman, E. J., Garry, M., Bernstein, D. M., Kantner, J., & Lindsay, D. S. (2012). Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(5), 969–974.