Happy Believers and Sad Skeptics? Affective Influences on Gullibility
Abstract
How does affect influence gullibility? After a brief consideration of the nature of gullibility, I describe a series of experiments that explored the prediction that in situations in which close attention to stimulus information is required, negative mood can reduce gullibility and positive mood can increase gullibility. The experiments examined mood effects on truth judgments, vulnerability to misleading information, the tendency to uncritically accept interpersonal messages, the detection of deception, and the tendency to see meaning in random or meaningless information. In all of these domains, positive mood promoted gullibility and negative mood reduced it. The practical and theoretical significance of these convergent findings are discussed, and the practical implications of affectively induced gullibility in real-life domains are considered.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Priming people with emotion has been demonstrated to both increase and decrease people's gullibility, depending on the category of emotion.
“priming people with emotion has been demonstrated to both increase and decrease people’s gullibility, depending on the category of emotion (53)”
From Deepfake detection by human crowds, machines, and machine-informed crowds (2022) · cites this paper as [53]
Cites
Proceedings of the American philosophical society
(1838) · Journal of the Franklin Institute · doi:10.1016/s0016-0032(38)92229-x · Cited by 5,524 · see citing works
Frankmann, J. P., & Adams, J. (1904) · The American Journal of Psychology · doi:10.2307/1412635 · Cited by 4,247 · see citing works
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218 · Cited by 3,512 · see citing works
Mood and judgment: The affect infusion model (AIM).
Forgas, J. P. (1995) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.39 · Cited by 3,470 · see citing works
Self-citationSapiens: a brief history of humankind
Harari, Y. N. (2015) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.190494 · Cited by 2,154 · see citing works
de Sousa, R. (1987) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/5760.001.0001 · Cited by 1,596 · see citing works
Gilbert, D. T. (1991) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.46.2.107 · Cited by 1,526 · see citing works
Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Joynt, R. J. (1995) · JAMA · doi:10.1001/jama.1995.03520420079045 · Cited by 1,447 · see citing works
Hastorf, A. H., & Isen, A. M. (1982) · Elsevier eBooks · Cited by 1,033 · see citing works
How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life
Gilovich, T. D. (1991) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 1,005 · see citing works
The Handbook of affect and social cognition
(2001) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.38-5270 · Cited by 996 · see citing works
Nonverbal behavior and self-presentation.
DePaulo, B. M. (1992) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.111.2.203 · Cited by 849 · see citing works
The trilogy of mind: Cognition, affection, and conation
Hilgard, E. R. (1980) · Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1002/1520-6696(198004)16:2 · Cited by 768 · see citing works
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Popper, K. R. (2013) · Princeton University Press eBooks · doi:10.1515/9781400846672 · Cited by 727 · see citing works
Mood and Persuasion: Affective States Influence the Processing of Persuasive Communications
Schwarz, N., Bless, H., & Bohner, G. (1991) · Advances in experimental social psychology · doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60329-9 · Cited by 560 · see citing works
On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit
Pennycook, G., Allan Cheyne, J., Barr, N., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2015) · Judgment and Decision Making · doi:10.1017/s1930297500006999 · Cited by 536 · see citing works
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
Ogden, S. A. (1999) · Philosophy and literature · doi:10.1353/phl.1999.0007 · Cited by 513 · see citing works
Cognitive Processes in Depression
Newman, C. F. (1989) · The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease · doi:10.1097/00005053-198908000-00008 · Cited by 475 · see citing works
With Sadness Comes Accuracy; With Happiness, False Memory
Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2005) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01615.x · Cited by 472 · see citing works
The Learned Interpretation of Cognitive Fluency
Unkelbach, C. (2006) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01708.x · Cited by 248 · see citing works
On being happy and gullible: Mood effects on skepticism and the detection of deception
Forgas, J. P., & East, R. (2008) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.04.010 · Cited by 247 · see citing works
Self-citationDon’t Worry, Be Sad! On the Cognitive, Motivational, and Interpersonal Benefits of Negative Mood
Forgas, J. P. (2013) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721412474458 · Cited by 240 · see citing works
Self-citationMood effects on eyewitness memory: Affective influences on susceptibility to misinformation
Forgas, J. P., Laham, S. M., & Vargas, P. T. (2005) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2004.11.005 · Cited by 221 · see citing works
Self-citationTraining Lie Detectors to Use Nonverbal Cues Instead of Global Heuristics
Fiedler, K., & WALKA, I. (1993) · Human Communication Research · doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.1993.tb00321.x · Cited by 142 · see citing works
Handbook of Psychology, Experimental Psychology
Healy, A. F., & Proctor, R. W. (2012) · Cited by 141 · see citing works
Cognitive Reflection and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2018) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167218783192 · Cited by 99 · see citing works
Koch, A. S., & Forgas, J. P. (2011) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.10.006 · Cited by 68 · see citing works
Self-citationForgas, J. P., & East, R. (2008) · Journal of Nonverbal Behavior · doi:10.1007/s10919-008-0050-1 · Cited by 54 · see citing works
Self-citationMatovic, D., Koch, A. S., & Forgas, J. P. (2013) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2013.12.003 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
Self-citationPsychological Science Meets a Gullible Post-Truth World
Myers, D. G. (2019) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9780429203787-5 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Forgas, J. P., & Baumeister, R. F. (2019) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9780429203787-1 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Schmid, P., Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N., Kendeou, P., Vraga, E. K., & Amazeen, M. A. (2022) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-021-00006-y · Cited by 1,372 · see citing works
Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news
Martel, C., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2020) · Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications · doi:10.1186/s41235-020-00252-3 · Cited by 470 · see citing works
Deepfake detection by human crowds, machines, and machine-informed crowds
Groh, M., Epstein, Z., Firestone, C., & Picard, R. (2022) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2110013119 · Cited by 248 · see citing works
Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news
Martel, C., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/a2ydw · Cited by 49 · see citing works
- Authors
- Forgas, J. P.
- Affiliations
- UNSW Sydney (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Forgas, Joseph P.
- ORCID
- Forgas, Joseph P.
- Venue
- Current Directions in Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2019-04-05
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 306-313
- ISSN
- 0963-7214 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-8721
- OpenAlex
- W2928064607
- Cited by
- 61
- References
- 31
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 2
- FWCI
- 5.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Current Directions in Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Australian Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Deception detection and forensic psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Psychology of Social Influence
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- gullibility, emotional factors, mood, positive mood, negative mood, truth judgments, misleading information, deception detection, belief formation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
