Frequent Exposure to Images Increases Their Perceived Authenticity
(A2023-114425)

AUTHORS

Farhana Tabassum, BI Norwegian Business School; Klemens Knoeferle, BI Norwegian Business School; Luk Warlop, BI Norwegian Business School

ABSTRACT

Various industries that are dependent on photographic images for communication with their stakeholders, such as, politics, hospitality, services, fashion, etc. are resorting to a frenzied level of editing of images, making photo-faking a common practice and phenomenon all over the world. These images that we view repeatedly are usually convincingly edited. We hypothesize that repeatedly viewing photographic images reduces consumers’ suspicion that images might be edited and increases their perceived authenticity. Findings from 5 experiments suggest that participants judged old or familiar images as more truthful and less fake than new or unfamiliar images. We validated the effect using various images that consumers are likely to encounter, e.g., human faces, or service interior and different response scale labels, i.e., judging truth vs. fakeness. Importantly, the effect occurred in the presence of a prior warning instruction. Implications of frequent exposure to images are discussed.