Are Presidential Candidates Impervious to Deception Detection? A Test of Voters' Truth‐Default

This study applies truth-default theory (TDT) to presidential candidates. TDT holds that people tend passively believe others without consciously considering whether they are being told the truth. But do voters have a toward candidates? In an experiment, across United States (N = 294) watched news interview in which candidate was either honest or deceptive. Party affiliation also manipulated. Consistent with TDT, thought-listing tasks revealed most did not mention deception after exposure campaign interview. Voters largely defaulted truth even when sustaining outgroup partisan and deception, asked about candidate's demeanor. Filling out closed-ended scales, though, reported distrust, suspicion, perceiving deceptive messaging. The discussion concerns implications of voters' perceptions veracity varying based on how prompted.