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research-article2019
CDPXXX10.1177/0963721419834543ForgasAffective Influences on Gullibility
ASSOCIATION FOR
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Current Directions in Psychological
Happy Believers and Sad Skeptics? Science
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DOI: 10.1177/0963721419834543
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419834543
www.psychologicalscience.org/CDPS
Joseph P. Forgas
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales
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.
Keywords
affect, gullibility, skepticism, deception
What is the role of affect in gullibility? Does mood influ- of our species (Dawkins, 1976; Harari, 2014). The pro-
ence the way people examine and evaluate doubtful pensity to believe, learn from other people, and share
information? Humans are a rather moody species (Forgas information confers significant adaptive benefits (von
& Eich, 2013), and credulity is also a fundamental char- Hippel, 2018). Yet this symbolic ability can also be the
acteristic of humankind (Greenspan, 2009; Harari, 2014). potential source of gullibility, a pejorative term typically
Public interest in gullibility has increased in recent years, defined as a failure of social intelligence in which a
since the emergence of a posttruth world in which the person is easily tricked or manipulated to believe unlikely
cognitive processes of voters and their openness to propositions that are unsupported by evidence.
simple, populist messages proved surprisingly important Gullibility can be inferred when a person’s beliefs either
in influencing political events, such as Brexit, the ascen- violate facts and reality or deviate from consensual social
dancy of Trump, and the election of populist autocrats norms about reality. Not all gullibility is dysfunctional,
in once-democratic countries (e.g., Hungary, Turkey; and identifying absolute standards of “truth” remains a
Albright, 2018; Pennycook & Rand, 2019). Social and complex and unresolved philosophical issue (Popper,
cognitive psychology have a great deal to contribute to 1947). For the purposes of the current article, gullibility
our understanding of gullibility (Gilbert, 1991; Gilovich, is proposed as a meaningful and so far little-studied
1991), but the role of affect in credulity has not received integrative psychological concept that occurs in a variety
much prior attention. After a brief discussion of the of situations when people’s beliefs deviate from either
nature of human gullibility, I will describe a series of objectively available or consensually determined stan-
experiments demonstrating that positive affect can dards of reality.
increase gullibility and negative affect can reduce it in Throughout history, humans created and have believed
a variety of situations. many absurd and frequently vicious beliefs, often in a
futile attempt to understand, predict, and control their
What Is Gullibility?
Corresponding Author:
The uniquely human symbolic ability to create, share, Joseph P. Forgas, University of New South Wales, School of
and act on secondhand, fictional information or “memes” Psychology, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia
is one of the most remarkable evolutionary achievements E-mail: jp.forgas@unsw.edu.au
2 Forgas
social and physical world (Greenspan, 2009; Harari, construct. Understanding the psychological mechanisms
2014; Koestler, 1967). Beliefs in witches, vampires, were- that promote or inhibit gullibility is of growing topical
wolves, magic cures, magic potions, alchemy, and of interest (Myers, 2019; Pennycook & Rand, 2019). With
course, a flat earth were endemic until quite recently the rise of populism, demagoguery, “fake news,” politi-
(Pinker, 2018). Yet cautionary stories about gullibility cal correctness, identity politics, and nationalism, a bet-
also feature prominently in many folk tales and in clas- ter understanding of how affective states may influence
sical literature, highlighting the enduring cultural impor- gullibility is also of considerable practical importance
tance of this concept. Trusting the serpent was Adam (Pinker, 2018), as I will suggest in the next section.
and Eve’s (and our?) downfall, Homer’s Trojan horse is
a classic tale of gullibility, and Othello’s tragedy is also
Affect and Gullibility
about credulity.
Affect has long been suspected as a source of irrational-
ity. Numerous thinkers from Plato to Kant and Freud
Gullibility Today considered affect to be a primitive and invasive faculty
In our age, marketing, advertising, and politics continue that can overwhelm or subvert rational mental pro-
to exploit the human inclination to believe—gullibility— cesses (Hilgard, 1980). An early illustration of affective
and often rely on affective manipulations to do so influences on gullibility was provided by Razran (1940),
(Forgas & Baumeister, 2019; Gilbert, 1991; Gilovich, who found that political messages were more effective
1991). Conspiracy theories, pyramid schemes, alternative when recipients were in a positive mood (after a free
therapies, and miracle diets continue to thrive. Some lunch!) rather than in a bad mood (exposed to noxious
academics are no less gullible. It seems remarkably easy smells). More recent work showed, however, that affect
to publish intentionally nonsensical articles in “reputa- can also serve as an adaptive and even essential input
ble” academic journals of feminism and grievance stud- to effective social thinking (Damasio, 1994; de Sousa,
ies, as long as those articles demonstrate the expected 1987). In this article, I will focus on how gullibility is
politically correct tribal bias (Lindsay, Bhoghossian, & influenced by moods (previously defined as low-intensity,
Pluckrose, 2018; Sokal & Bricmont, 1998). And many diffuse, and relatively enduring affective states) without
“true believers” in public life continue to promote a salient antecedent cause and therefore little cognitive
seductive closed systems of thought, such as national- content (Forgas, 1995).
ism, or Marxism and its manifold derivatives, including Moods may influence gullibility primarily by regulat-
various collectivist “social-justice” ideologies that either ing the kind of information-processing strategies people
have been falsified or were constructed to be unfalsifiable spontaneously adopt (Forgas & Eich, 2013). Specifically,
in the first place (Forgas & Baumeister, 2019; Popper, negative moods can trigger a more detailed, attentive,
1947). With the advent of the Internet, “truth” and ratio- and data-driven processing style, and positive moods
nality in public life are increasingly at risk, as information produce more creative, theory-driven, and heuristic
is no longer filtered by a trusted class of scientists, thinking (Clark & Isen, 1982; Forgas & Eich, 2013;
experts, and writers (Albright, 2018; Myers, 2019). Fredrickson, 2001; Schwarz, Bless, & Bohner, 1991). The
There is growing concern about gullibility in politics processing effects of moods have recently been theo-
as well, and affect has long played a role in political retically integrated in the assimilative-accommodative
credulity (Razran, 1940). Rationality is not a dominant model proposed by Bless and Fiedler (2006), suggesting
feature of human thinking (Kahneman, 2011). Uncriti- that moods perform an important evolutionary signaling
cally accepting information is often the baseline strat- function. Accordingly, positive moods signal safe and
egy; doubt and rejection may only come later and familiar situations triggering more assimilative, creative,
require additional effort and attention (Gilbert, 1991). and top-down thinking, whereas negative mood func-
Human history is replete with more or less effective and tions as a mild alarm signal recruiting more accommoda-
ever-changing belief systems (Harari, 2014). Yet these tive, attentive, and externally focused processing. Clinical
shared beliefs can also be extremely effective. Our cur- work on “depressive realism,” although debated, also
rent enlightenment beliefs in liberty and equality serve suggests that negative mood may sometimes produce a
as the foundation of perhaps the most successful civili- more accurate perception of reality (Alloy & Abramson,
zation in human history (Pinker, 2018). It is entirely 1988).
possible, however, that in some future utopia (or dys- This article focuses on situations that call for data-
topia?) our currently deeply held beliefs may also come driven processes in which negative mood—recruiting
to be regarded as naive and gullible. accommodative, externally focused thinking—may pro-
Thus, gullibility appears to be a universal feature of vide a distinct advantage in reducing gullibility com-
the human condition and an important psychological pared with positive mood. A growing number of
Affective Influences on Gullibility 3
experiments support these predictions, showing that 0.65 High Cognitive Fluency
people in a mild negative mood pay closer attention to
Low Cognitive Fluency
the quality of persuasive arguments, show improved
eyewitness accuracy, pay closer attention to new infor-
Statements Judged as True
0.6
mation, are less subject to judgmental distortions, and
communicate more effectively (Forgas & Eich, 2013;
Schwarz et al., 1991; Storbeck & Clore, 2005). In turn,
assimilative thinking in positive mood promotes creativ- 0.55
ity, theory-driven thinking, greater use of mental short-
cuts, and heuristics and so may provide processing
benefits in a different class of situations (Fredrickson, 0.5
2001). Extrapolating from past work, I expected here
that negative mood should reduce and positive mood
increase gullibility whenever close attention to new,
external information is required. This prediction was 0.45
examined in a series of experiments exploring mood Positive Neutral Negative
effects on (a) the truth bias, (b) nonsense detection, (c) Mood Mood Mood
interpersonal gullibility, (d) the detection of deception, Fig. 1. Mood effects on truth judgments: the effect of positive, neu-
and (e) gullibility in eyewitness reports. tral, and negative mood and high or low cognitive fluency on the
proportion of ambiguous statements judged as true. Error bars show
standard errors. (Data from Koch & Forgas, 2012.)
Experimental Evidence for Mood
Effects on Gullibility
Nonsense receptivity: perceiving
Mood effects on believing doubtful meaning where there is none
claims
Inferring meaning in random or meaningless informa-
Much of the everyday information we receive from tion is surprisingly common, even among academics
other people may be doubtful and has unknown truth (Sokal & Bricmont, 1998). Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr,
value. People often rely on simple heuristics such as Koehler, and Fugelsang (2015) confirmed this effect,
familiarity and ease of processing (fluency) to decide showing that people—including some academics—
whether to believe or disbelieve a claim with unknown often perceive vacuous, pseudoprofound nonsense text
truth value (Unkelbach, 2006). In one experiment, a as meaningful (Lindsay et al., 2018). In one study, my
colleague and I investigated the joint effects of mood colleagues and I asked participants in a positive or
and ease of processing on believing a variety of doubt- negative mood (after viewing cheerful or sad video-
ful claims (e.g., “Syntagm is the antonym of paradigm,” tapes) to rate the meaningfulness of two kinds of verbal
“The world’s tallest tree is a spruce”; Koch & Forgas, nonsense text, including vacuous New Age pronounce-
2012). After a mood induction (viewing positive or ments (e.g., “Good health imparts reality to subtle cre-
negative films), participants judged the truth of various ativity”) and meaningless pseudoscientific psychological
such doubtful statements presented with either high or jargon phrases (e.g., “subjective instrumental sublima-
low perceptual fluency (high or low visual contrast). tions”; Forgas, Matovic, & Slater, 2018).
Highly fluent claims (high visual contrast) were judged As expected, participants in a positive mood saw
as significantly truer overall than disfluent claims. Con- more “meaning” in these gibberish texts (see Fig. 2).
sistent with Bless and Fiedler’s (2006) assimilative-versus- Positive-mood judges were not only more gullible but
accommodative-processing model, results showed that also took less time to produce a judgment; they also
negative mood eliminated and positive mood maintained had worse recall and recognition memory than did
people’s reliance on processing fluency as a heuristic cue those in the neutral- and negative-mood conditions,
indicating truth (Fig. 1). Participants in a negative mood consistent with the predicted processing differences.
were also more attentive to the quality of the claims, a In a conceptual replication, we used abstract visual
result that is conceptually similar to earlier findings that rather than verbal stimuli. Participants in public places
people in a negative mood also play closer attention to received a mood induction (reminiscing about positive
the quality of persuasive arguments, compared with peo- or negative life episodes) and then judged the mean-
ple in a positive mood (Schwarz et al., 1991). Thus, ingfulness of four abstract expressionist images by
moods can influence people’s tendency to rely on heu- Jackson Pollock and other artists (Forgas et al., 2018).
ristic shortcuts such as fluency in veracity judgments. Positive mood again significantly increased the perceived
4 Forgas
4.1 Positive
(Forgas & East, 2008b). This mood effect on accepting
nonverbal displays at face value was further confirmed
3.9 Neutral when participants evaluated the sincerity of specific,
Meaningfulness Rating
3.7 Negative discrete facial emotions displayed by actors (happiness,
3.5 anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, and fear). Participants
in a positive mood displayed significantly greater cre-
3.3 dulity than participants in a negative mood across all
3.1 emotional expressions except surprise (see Fig. 3).
Detecting ambiguity in verbal messages is an equally
2.9
important task. In one study (Matovic, Koch, & Forgas,
2.7 2014), participants received a video mood induction
2.5 and were next asked to correctly identify whether or
New Age Science not sentences were ambiguous. Results showed that
Type of Nonsense Jargon negative mood resulted in the more accurate detection
of linguistic ambiguity than did positive mood, consis-
Fig. 2. Mood effects on nonsense receptivity (seeing meaning in tent with the adoption of a more accommodative pro-
nonsense sentences): the effect of positive, neutral, and negative
mood on meaningfulness ratings of nonsensical New Age jargon
cessing style. This role of processing style in producing
statements and pseudoscientific jargon terms. Error bars show stan- this effect was confirmed by evidence for more exten-
dard errors. (Data from Forgas, Matovic, & Slater, 2018.) sive processing latencies and the more accurate recall
by participants in a negative mood (Fig. 4).
Detecting intentional deception presents an even
meaningfulness of these indeterminate, nonfigurative more difficult cognitive task for the gullible. In one
images, compared with negative mood. study (Forgas & East, 2008a), participants viewed mood-
inducing films and then watched the interrogation of
targets who were either truthful or deceptive in denying
Mood effects on interpersonal gullibility
an alleged theft. As expected, negative mood not only
Deception, dissimulation, and manipulation are very resulted in more guilty judgments overall but also sig-
common strategies in interpersonal behavior, and nificantly improved the accurate detection of deception
detecting deception and misleading messages is of great when it occurred.
importance not only in our personal lives but also in
forensic, judicial, and investigative practice (Fiedler &
Walka, 1993). People are generally poor at detecting
Mood and eyewitness gullibility
interpersonal deception (DePaulo, 1992), and mood Eyewitness reports are easily contaminated by mislead-
may play a particularly important role in such judg- ing information received after the event, itself a form
ments. For example, when rating the genuineness of of gullibility (Loftus, 1998). In several experiments,
positive and negative facial expressions displayed by we found that negative mood significantly reduced eye-
professional actors, participants in a positive mood witness gullibility (Forgas, Laham, & Vargas, 2005). For
believed the expressions to be more genuine than did example, students in a lecture hall first witnessed a
those in the neutral- and negative-mood conditions staged aggressive incident between a lecturer and a
7.5
Positive Mood Negative Mood
7
6.5
Truthfulness Rating
6
5.5
5
4.5
4
3.5
Anger Fear Happiness Surprise Disgust Sadness
Facial Expression
Fig. 3. Mood effects on nonverbal gullibility: the effect of positive and negative mood on mean
ratings of the truthfulness of six facial expressions. Error bars show standard errors. (Data from
Forgas & East, 2008b.)
Affective Influences on Gullibility 5
a b c
12.5 41
Sentences Correctly Recalled (%)
40
Mean Processing Latency (s)
Correctly Identified (%) 12 39
Ambiguous Sentences
11.5 37
35
11 35
30 10.5 33
10 31
25 9.5 29
Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive Negative
Mood Mood Mood Mood Mood Mood
Fig. 4. Mood effects detecting verbal ambiguity: the effect of positive and negative mood on (a) the mean ability to cor-
rectly detect ambiguous sentences, (b) the mean time taken to process the task, and (c) the mean percentage of correctly
recalled target sentences. Error bars show standard errors. (Data from Matovic, Koch, & Forgas, 2014.)
female intruder. A week later, when in a manipulated to show false memory effects than those in positive
negative or positive mood, eyewitnesses received mis- moods” (p. 785).
leading information (embedded in leading questions) A signal detection analysis confirmed that negative
about the witnessed encounter. Positive mood increased mood actually improved eyewitnesses’ ability to discrimi-
and negative mood almost completely eliminated eye- nate between correct and misleading memory details.
witness gullibility and the incorrect infusion of mislead- Eyewitnesses in this situation had no subjective aware-
ing details into memory, consistent with negative affect ness of their mood-induced biases, and even explicit
promoting more attentive and accommodative thinking instructions were ineffective at controlling these mood
(Fig. 5). Conceptually similar results were reported by effects (Forgas et al., 2005). These studies offer conver-
Storbeck and Clore (2005), who also found that “indi- gent evidence that moods can have a marked influence
viduals in negative moods were significantly less likely on eyewitness gullibility by automatically promoting a
more or less focused accommodative processing style.
3 Leading Question
Nonleading Question Discussion
2.5 Deciding what to believe and whom to trust are among
2
the most difficult and cognitively demanding tasks we
False Memory
face in everyday life. The universal human propensity
1.5 to accept and believe symbolic information we receive
from other people is essential for social integration and
1 cultural evolution but can also be the source of gull-
ibility and irrational beliefs (Gilbert, 1991; Gilovich,
0.5
1991; Harari, 2014). The results reported here offer
0 convergent evidence that mood can influence gullibility
Happy Neutral Sad in a variety of situations. In tasks in which data-focused
thinking was required, negative compared with positive
Mood mood resulted in reduced truth bias, nonsense receptiv-
Fig. 5. Mood effects on eyewitness gullibility: the effect of happy, ity, and eyewitness gullibility and improved the ability to
neutral, and sad mood on false-memory judgments after participants detect deception. These findings are consistent with our
were and were not given leading questions. Positive mood increased theoretical expectation that positive and negative moods
and negative mood decreased (compared with neutral mood) the trigger qualitatively different information-processing strat-
incorporation of misleading information (false recall) into eyewitness
memory: average number of false details incorrectly remembered. Error egies (Bless & Fiedler, 2006) and have some promising
bars show standard errors. (Data from Forgas, Laham, & Vargas, 2005.) theoretical and practical implications.
6 Forgas
Theoretical implications to counterbalance the one-sided hedonistic emphasis
on the benefits of happiness in popular culture. Nega-
These studies extend previous work on mood effects tive affect can not only reduce gullibility but also
on social cognition (Forgas, 2013; Forgas & Eich, 2013) decrease judgmental mistakes, improve memory, and
to the new domain of gullibility. Veracity judgments facilitate effective communication (Forgas, 2013; Forgas
require highly constructive processing that tends to & Eich, 2013; Storbeck & Clore, 2005). These findings
promote mood effects (Fiedler, 2001; Forgas, 1995). confirm that both positive and negative affective states
When close attention to the external world is required, can play an important adaptive role in how we respond
negative mood (compared with positive mood) can to everyday challenges. Accordingly, temporary nega-
reduce gullibility, consistent with recent affect-cognition tive affect should be accepted as a normal and adaptive
theories suggesting that negative affect functions like feature of everyday human functioning.
a mild evolutionary warning signal, promoting more In summary, judging the veracity of social information
accommodative and attentive processing that increases can be a demanding cognitive task that requires highly
sensitivity to false or misleading information (Bless & constructive processing strategies. These experiments
Fiedler, 2006). extend recent research on affect and social cognition to
These results also extend the recent literature docu- the new domain of gullibility and skepticism and sug-
menting the beneficial effects of negative mood in cer- gest that further work on affective influences on veracity
tain situations, including reducing judgmental errors judgments, gullibility, and skepticism should be of con-
and improving strategic communications (Forgas, 2013; siderable theoretical as well as applied interest.
Forgas & Eich, 2013). These effects are often mediated
by subtle contextual cues, and affective influences on
Recommended Reading
gullibility may also depend on pragmatic and situational
variables such as the motivations, personality, and Forgas, J. P., & Baumeister, R. (2019). (See References). A
good survey of the latest social psychological research on
affective intelligence of the individual (Fiedler, 2001;
gullibility and its causes, including conspiracy theories.
Forgas, 1995; Forgas & Eich, 2013). Of course, negative
Forgas, J. P., & Eich, E. (2013). (See References). A good
mood is not always beneficial, and in many situations, overall review of the literature on affective influences on
more assimilative, creative, and theory-driven thinking social cognition and judgments.
produced by positive mood has functional advantages Gilovich, T. (1991). (See References). An exploration of the
(Fredrickson, 2001). cognitive, social, and motivational processes through
which even highly educated people become convinced
of the validity of questionable beliefs and the psycho-
Practical implications logical processes that contribute to faulty reasoning and
Given the strong human propensity to believe rather decisions.
than disbelieve (Gilbert, 1991; Gilovich, 1991), reducing Greenspan, S. (2009). (See References). An excellent and
readable review of the problem of gullibility in the areas
everyday gullibility is of considerable applied impor-
of religion, politics, science, and medicine, including a
tance. Professionals in the persuasion business, such
historical overview of human gullibility.
as advertisers, salesmen, and politicians, have long sus-
pected that positive mood is likely to reduce scrutiny
Action Editor
and promote credulity (Razran, 1940). These experi-
ments provide empirical support for this assumption Randall W. Engle served as action editor for this article.
and also offer some evidence for the psychological
processing mechanism responsible for this “happy-and- Acknowledgments
gullible” versus “sad-and-skeptical” effect. Future For further information on my research program, see http://
research may explore mood effects on gullibility in forgas.socialpsychology.org and http://www2.psy.unsw.edu
more complex and realistic interactive situations and .au/Users/JForgas.
also investigate the consequences of specific emotions,
such as fear, disgust, and anger, for gullibility and skep- Declaration of Conflicting Interests
ticism. Understanding these mechanisms has some The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest
important practical implications for improving affective with respect to the authorship or the publication of this
intelligence in everyday life and could also be incor- article.
porated in the training of counsellors and applied-
persuasion professionals. Funding
These results also help to highlight the often- Support from the Australian Research Council for this project
neglected adaptive benefits of negative affect and help is gratefully acknowledged.
Affective Influences on Gullibility 7
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