In Judging Truth (Annual Review of Psychology), the authors make the claim that truth judgments are constructed and reflect inferences drawn from 3 types of information:
- Base rates
- Feelings
- Consistency with information retrieved from memory
Each of the three inferences usually increases accuracy.
However, specific kinds of errors can result from each class of inference.
- People tend to accept incoming information from the environment as true.
- People tend to interpret feelings as evidence of truth.
- People tend to favor consistency with facts and memory.