ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1626047
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Phenomenon of Misinformation in Different Domains and by Various DisciplinesView all 4 articles
Distrusting Minds, Skeptical Judgments? No Evidence for a Trust-Truth Link
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
- 2DCU Business School, Dublin, Ireland
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Abstract Many daily situations require rapid judgments about whether information is true or false based on limited information. Prior research predominantly examined how statement and source characteristics influence these judgments. The present study shifts focus to individuals' stable traits, more specifically trust propensity, and its role in shaping truth judgments. Across three studies considering different social contexts (N = 679), we investigate whether trust propensity (i.e., one's general tendency to trust others) and the closely related construct of social trust (i.e., one's perception of others in general as more or less trustworthy) are associated with a greater likelihood to judge various statements as true. Contrary to expectations, linear mixed-effects analyses indicated that neither trust propensity nor social trust had any significant relationship with truth judgments across contexts. Bayesian analyses further indicated overall strong support for the null over the alternative hypothesis. Thus, this research highlights that, contrary to common-sense belief, trust-related traits may play little role in decision-making under uncertainty. Keywords: trust propensity, social trust, truth judgments, interpersonal trust, generalized trust
Keywords: Trust propensity, Social trust, truth judgments, interpersonal trust, Generalized trust
Received: 09 May 2025; Accepted: 09 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bertram, Lalot, Van Der Werff and Greifeneder. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Anna-Marie Bertram, anna-marie.bertram@unibas.ch
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