Extending Truth-Default Theory to Misinformation: Lessons for Misinformation Scholarship from Deception Research

This paper connects deception research, specifically truth-default theory (TDT), tomisinformation research. Through TDT’s propositions and supporting empirics, we demonstratehow the central questions in misinformation research can benefit from deeper engagement withdeception scholarship and in particular TDT. Findings in the misinformation literature that havebeen surprising or unexpected (e.g., relatively few people are exposed to and sharemisinformation online) are predicted and explained by TDT. Robust conclusions from TDTabout deception in human communication (e.g., people are truth-biased) are challenged byfindings from misinformation research, prompting deeper investigation. Deception detectionresearch paradigms have important lessons for misinformation research about the design ofmisinformation-detection tasks that should be considered when interpreting results (e.g.,true-false base rates, prompted vs. unprompted veracity judgments). Analytic approaches fromTDT (e.g., analyzing accuracy for truthful and deceptive messages independently) provide aframework for misinformation research to better understand the detection of misinformation andmore holistically evaluate the outcomes of misinformation interventions, and TDT’s lessons onhow to improve deception detection accuracy also suggest strategies for interventions whichimprove the detection of misinformation without undermining trust in credible news andinformation.