Eryn Newman | University of Southern California (original) (raw)
Papers by Eryn Newman
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memorie... more When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memories -tempering recall of a traumatic event. We examined people's attitudes toward these drugs. Americans and New Zealanders read about a hypothetical assault inserting themselves into a scenario as a victim attacked while serving on a peace keeping mission (soldier role) or while walking home from a job as a restaurant manager (civilian role). Then they told us whether they should receive a memory dampening drug, and whether they would want to take a memory dampening drug. Subjects were negatively disposed towards a memory dampening drug, but Americans who adopted the soldier role were more in favor of having access to the drug than those who adopted the civilian role. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to an increasing trend in 'cosmetic neurology', medicating with the goal of enhancement, rather than therapy.
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Li... more This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law, 2008
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
On the first day of April of 2012, an interesting trial took place in Wells County, exactly 103 y... more On the first day of April of 2012, an interesting trial took place in Wells County, exactly 103 years after the famous trial described by Wigmore (1909). The defendant, D, was charged with brutally stabbing a homeless man just after midnight on New Year's Day. Before the police arrived on the crime scene, the perpetrator, rushing to flee the scene, knocked into a witness who had seen the stabbing, Miss Jane Takin. Three weeks after the crime, a detective called Jane and asked her to participate in a procedure to see whether she ...
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2012
When people evaluate claims, they often rely on what comedian Stephen Colbert calls &... more When people evaluate claims, they often rely on what comedian Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness," or subjective feelings of truth. In four experiments, we examined the impact of nonprobative information on truthiness. In Experiments 1A and 1B, people saw familiar and unfamiliar celebrity names and, for each, quickly responded "true" or "false" to the (between-subjects) claim "This famous person is alive" or "This famous person is dead." Within subjects, some of the names appeared with a photo of the celebrity engaged in his or her profession, whereas other names appeared alone. For unfamiliar celebrity names, photos increased the likelihood that the subjects would judge the claim to be true. Moreover, the same photos inflated the subjective truth of both the "alive" and "dead" claims, suggesting that photos did not produce an "alive bias" but rather a "truth bias." Experiment 2 showed that photos and verbal information similarly inflated truthiness, suggesting that the effect is not peculiar to photographs per se. Experiment 3 demonstrated that nonprobative photos can also enhance the truthiness of general knowledge claims (e.g., Giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump). These effects add to a growing literature on how nonprobative information can inflate subjective feelings of truth.
PLoS ONE, 2014
When people make judgments about the truth of a claim, related but nonprobative information rapid... more When people make judgments about the truth of a claim, related but nonprobative information rapidly leads them to believe the claim-an effect called ''truthiness'' . Would the pronounceability of others' names also influence the truthiness of claims attributed to them? We replicated previous work by asking subjects to evaluate people's names on a positive dimension, and extended that work by asking subjects to rate those names on negative dimensions. Then we addressed a novel theoretical issue by asking subjects to read that same list of names, and judge the truth of claims attributed to them. Across all experiments, easily pronounced names trumped difficult names. Moreover, the effect of pronounceability produced truthiness for claims attributed to those names. Our findings are a new instantiation of truthiness, and extend research on the truth effect as well as persuasion by showing that subjective, tangential properties such as ease of processing can matter when people evaluate information attributed to a source.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012
On the first day of April of 2012, an interesting trial took place in Wells County, exactly 103 y... more On the first day of April of 2012, an interesting trial took place in Wells County, exactly 103 years after the famous trial described by Wigmore (1909). The defendant, D, was charged with brutally stabbing a homeless man just after midnight on New Year's Day. Before the police arrived on the crime scene, the perpetrator, rushing to flee the scene, knocked into a witness who had seen the stabbing, Miss Jane Takin. Three weeks after the crime, a detective called Jane and asked her to participate in a procedure to see whether she ...
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2011
When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memorie... more When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memories -tempering recall of a traumatic event. We examined people's attitudes toward these drugs. Americans and New Zealanders read about a hypothetical assault inserting themselves into a scenario as a victim attacked while serving on a peace keeping mission (soldier role) or while walking home from a job as a restaurant manager (civilian role). Then they told us whether they should receive a memory dampening drug, and whether they would want to take a memory dampening drug. Subjects were negatively disposed towards a memory dampening drug, but Americans who adopted the soldier role were more in favor of having access to the drug than those who adopted the civilian role. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to an increasing trend in 'cosmetic neurology', medicating with the goal of enhancement, rather than therapy.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memorie... more When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memories -tempering recall of a traumatic event. We examined people's attitudes toward these drugs. Americans and New Zealanders read about a hypothetical assault inserting themselves into a scenario as a victim attacked while serving on a peace keeping mission (soldier role) or while walking home from a job as a restaurant manager (civilian role). Then they told us whether they should receive a memory dampening drug, and whether they would want to take a memory dampening drug. Subjects were negatively disposed towards a memory dampening drug, but Americans who adopted the soldier role were more in favor of having access to the drug than those who adopted the civilian role. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to an increasing trend in 'cosmetic neurology', medicating with the goal of enhancement, rather than therapy.
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Li... more This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law, 2008
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
On the first day of April of 2012, an interesting trial took place in Wells County, exactly 103 y... more On the first day of April of 2012, an interesting trial took place in Wells County, exactly 103 years after the famous trial described by Wigmore (1909). The defendant, D, was charged with brutally stabbing a homeless man just after midnight on New Year's Day. Before the police arrived on the crime scene, the perpetrator, rushing to flee the scene, knocked into a witness who had seen the stabbing, Miss Jane Takin. Three weeks after the crime, a detective called Jane and asked her to participate in a procedure to see whether she ...
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2012
When people evaluate claims, they often rely on what comedian Stephen Colbert calls &... more When people evaluate claims, they often rely on what comedian Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness," or subjective feelings of truth. In four experiments, we examined the impact of nonprobative information on truthiness. In Experiments 1A and 1B, people saw familiar and unfamiliar celebrity names and, for each, quickly responded "true" or "false" to the (between-subjects) claim "This famous person is alive" or "This famous person is dead." Within subjects, some of the names appeared with a photo of the celebrity engaged in his or her profession, whereas other names appeared alone. For unfamiliar celebrity names, photos increased the likelihood that the subjects would judge the claim to be true. Moreover, the same photos inflated the subjective truth of both the "alive" and "dead" claims, suggesting that photos did not produce an "alive bias" but rather a "truth bias." Experiment 2 showed that photos and verbal information similarly inflated truthiness, suggesting that the effect is not peculiar to photographs per se. Experiment 3 demonstrated that nonprobative photos can also enhance the truthiness of general knowledge claims (e.g., Giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump). These effects add to a growing literature on how nonprobative information can inflate subjective feelings of truth.
PLoS ONE, 2014
When people make judgments about the truth of a claim, related but nonprobative information rapid... more When people make judgments about the truth of a claim, related but nonprobative information rapidly leads them to believe the claim-an effect called ''truthiness'' . Would the pronounceability of others' names also influence the truthiness of claims attributed to them? We replicated previous work by asking subjects to evaluate people's names on a positive dimension, and extended that work by asking subjects to rate those names on negative dimensions. Then we addressed a novel theoretical issue by asking subjects to read that same list of names, and judge the truth of claims attributed to them. Across all experiments, easily pronounced names trumped difficult names. Moreover, the effect of pronounceability produced truthiness for claims attributed to those names. Our findings are a new instantiation of truthiness, and extend research on the truth effect as well as persuasion by showing that subjective, tangential properties such as ease of processing can matter when people evaluate information attributed to a source.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012
On the first day of April of 2012, an interesting trial took place in Wells County, exactly 103 y... more On the first day of April of 2012, an interesting trial took place in Wells County, exactly 103 years after the famous trial described by Wigmore (1909). The defendant, D, was charged with brutally stabbing a homeless man just after midnight on New Year's Day. Before the police arrived on the crime scene, the perpetrator, rushing to flee the scene, knocked into a witness who had seen the stabbing, Miss Jane Takin. Three weeks after the crime, a detective called Jane and asked her to participate in a procedure to see whether she ...
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2011
When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memorie... more When people take drugs such as propranolol in response to trauma, it may dampen their bad memories -tempering recall of a traumatic event. We examined people's attitudes toward these drugs. Americans and New Zealanders read about a hypothetical assault inserting themselves into a scenario as a victim attacked while serving on a peace keeping mission (soldier role) or while walking home from a job as a restaurant manager (civilian role). Then they told us whether they should receive a memory dampening drug, and whether they would want to take a memory dampening drug. Subjects were negatively disposed towards a memory dampening drug, but Americans who adopted the soldier role were more in favor of having access to the drug than those who adopted the civilian role. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to an increasing trend in 'cosmetic neurology', medicating with the goal of enhancement, rather than therapy.