Illusory Truth in Minimal Groups

Repetition increases rated truth for facts, falsities and sociopolitical opinions. One current model proposes that recent activation of coherent referential networks representing initial stimuli creates the processing fluency which produces illusory truth effects. We review evidence of self-referential memory and social identity maintenance, noting an absence of social group statements as stimuli in illusory truth studies. In three experiments we assigned participants to minimal social groups, then presented group-descriptive sentences in interest and truth rating phases. Ingroup sentences contained reflexive pronouns (“[group] like yourself often ‘tell it like it is.’”) and outgroup sentences did not (“[group] often ‘holds things in.’”). We observed ingroup-specific illusory truth which was inconsistently related to prior interest. After seven days we found weak illusory truth effects for statements without ingroup marking and equated in prior presentation frequency, a demanding homogenous fluency context. Constructive social memory processes create lasting memory representations for novel, arbitrary social information.