How do people judge the veracity of a message? The negativity bias in judgments of truth describes the phenomenon that the same message is more likely judged as true when framed negatively compared to positively. This manuscript investigates the negativity bias in conditions of psychological proximity and the possibility that the bias decreases when distance increases. This notion is informed by construal level theory, which holds that negative information is more salient and weighed more strongly in conditions of psychological proximity compared to distance. Against this background, we hypothesize that a negativity bias likely occurs in conditions of proximity. With increasing psychological distance, however, positively compared to negatively framed information is more likely to be judged true, therefore attenuating or even reversing the bias. Two studies provide preliminary yet weak support for this hypothesis. A final registered study put the preliminary conclusions to a critical test and yielded consistent results: We find a significant interaction between frame and distance, indicating a descriptive trend for a negativity bias in conditions of proximity, yet a positivity bias in conditions of distance. This interaction illustrates that psychological distance may impact the negativity bias in truth judgments.

中文翻译：

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否定在此时此地是正确的，但在彼时并非如此。

人们如何判断消息的真实性？真相判断中的消极偏见描述了这样一种现象，即相同的信息在消极的框架下比积极的框架更有可能被判断为真实。这份手稿调查了心理接近条件下的消极偏见以及当距离增加时偏见减少的可能性。这个概念是由解释水平理论得出的，该理论认为，与距离相比，在心理接近的条件下，负面信息更显着，权重更大。在这种背景下，我们假设消极偏见可能发生在接近的条件下。然而，随着心理距离的增加，与负面信息相比，正面信息更有可能被判断为真实，因此会减弱甚至扭转偏见。两项研究为这一假设提供了初步但较弱的支持。最终的注册研究将初步结论进行了严格的测试并产生了一致的结果：我们发现框架和距离之间存在显着的相互作用，表明在接近条件下存在负面偏见的描述性趋势，但在距离条件下存在积极偏见。这种相互作用表明，心理距离可能会影响真相判断中的消极偏见。