Intentions Matter: How Source Intent Influences Perceptions of Truth

The researchers worked with 1,181 participants and examined approximately 16,200 responses fielded during their experiments.

Although participants knew precisely how accurate the claims were, participants classified claims as false more often when they judged the information source to be intending to deceive them.

Similarly, they classified claims as true more often when they judged the information source to be intending to provide an approximate account rather than a precise one, according to the study.

“Even when people know precisely how accurate or inaccurate a claim of fact is, whether they consider that claim to be true or false hinges on the intentions they attribute to the claim’s information source,” said Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Liane Young, an author of the report. “In other words, the intentions of information sources sway people’s judgments about what information should qualify as true.”

The findings suggest that, even if people have access to the same set of facts, they might disagree about the truth of claims if they attribute discrepant intentions to information sources.

In future work, the researchers hope to develop an expanded understanding about how people think about truth. Moreover, given the rise in popularity of Artificial Intelligence models, such as ChatGPT, the researchers may investigate whether state-of-the-art AI models “think” about truth similarly to humans, or whether these models merely attend to objective accuracy when evaluating truth.

1. Perception of a source’s intention, whether informative or deceptive, influences our judgment about the truthfulness of a claim.
2. This influence persists even when we have clear knowledge of the factual accuracy of a claim.
3. Discrepancies in attributed intentions to information sources could lead to disagreements with others about the truth of claims even when we share the same set of facts with them.