Extending Truth-Default Theory to Misinformation: Connecting Misinformation Scholarship and Deception Research

This article connects deception research, specifically truth-default theory (TDT), to misinformation scholarship. Through TDT’s propositions and supporting empirics, we demonstrate how central questions in misinformation scholarship can benefit from deeper engagement with deception research and in particular TDT. Findings in the misinformation literature that have been surprising or unexpected (e.g., relatively few people are exposed to and share misinformation online) are predicted and explained by TDT. Robust conclusions from TDT about deception in human communication (e.g., people are truth-biased) are challenged by findings from misinformation research, prompting deeper investigation. Deception-detection research paradigms provide conceptual and empirical reference points relevant to the design of misinformation-detection tasks and interpretation of their results (e.g., true–false base rates, prompted vs. unprompted veracity judgments). Analytic approaches from TDT (e.g., analyzing accuracy for truthful and deceptive messages independently) support existing misinformation research aiming to understand the detection of misinformation and can holistically evaluate the outcomes of misinformation interventions, and TDT’s findings on how to improve deception-detection accuracy also suggest strategies for interventions that improve the detection of misinformation without undermining trust in credible news and information.