Interpersonal Reality Monitoring: For Politicians, the Less Said, the Better

Research on interpersonal reality monitoring has shown that added details in verbal accounts can increase believability; however, in the context of mistrust, added details can have no effect or even decrease believability (Johnson, Bush, & Mitchell, 1998). Research on stereotypes has shown that beliefs about a group influence judgments about individuals from the group, with interpersonal consequences (e.g., Payne, 2006; Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977). Four dissertation studies combined and extended work on interpersonal reality monitoring and stereotypes by investigating whether stereotypes relevant to dishonesty influence the impact of account details on believability of, and memory for, politicians' accounts. Part 1 of this dissertation reports three studies testing the hypothesis that stereotypes about dishonesty will decrease the positive impact of details on interpersonal reality monitoring of politicians relative to more trusted speakers. Consistent with this prediction, in Study 1, believability of accounts attributed to politicians benefited less from added details than accounts attributed to teachers. Added details decreased believability of accounts attributed to corrupt and uncertain motive politicians in Study 2, and accounts attributed to honest and corrupt politicians in Study 3. Lower recall of accounts attributed to politicians than teachers (Study I), accounts attributed to corrupt than uncertain motive politicians (Study 2), and accounts attributed to corrupt than honest politicians (Study 3), suggests poorer encoding of information from untrustworthy sources compared to trustworthy sources, and untrustworthy sources compared to uncertain motive sources. Supplementing these findings, Part 2 reports recall findings separately for base, subjective, and objective details, and examines additional dependent variables (e.g., participants' reported reasons for their believability judgments). A fourth study examining the effects of stereotypes about Asian American politicians showed no significant effects, possibly due to a departure from Studies 1-3 in the operationalization of believability. Taken together, the findings are consistent with theoretical accounts of interpersonal reality monitoring that emphasize the differential weighting of features depending on context, and have practical implications for the types of information that might have an impact on politicians' believability.