Jérémy Béna | MCF, AMU, LPC

brief CV

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Jérémy Béna

Associate professor (maître de conférences), Aix-Marseille Université, Centre de Recherche en Psychologie et Neurosciences (CRPN, CNRS, UMR 7077), France

Mainly interested in memory, beliefs, evaluations, and how memory shapes evaluations and beliefs.

e-mail ORCID ResearchGate Twitter

Past post-doctoral positions

March 2022 - August 2023

Post-doctoral fellowship funded by the Fonds Special de Recherche (FSR, UCLouvain, Belgium).

Project entitled: “Investigating ‘reversed’ truth effects.”

Supervisor: Prof. Olivier Corneille

Brief overview of the project:

The Internet facilitates access to veridical but also to false and misleading information. False and misleading information manifests itself in, e.g., fake news, conspiracy theories, and rumors, and it may be detrimental to individuals and to social groups (e.g., by promoting harmful health practices or uninformed voting behavior). An important finding is that repeated exposure to information typically increases its perceived truth. This effect of repetition has been coined the repetition-induced truth effect (or truth effect). The truth effect is commonly accounted for in terms of fluency (ease of processing) and familiarity: repeated exposure makes statements easier to process, and this metacognitive feeling of fluency is then misattributed to truth.


The truth effect makes it possible that false information becomes subjectively more true simply by being shared and repeatedly encountered. In contrast to this well-established study of the truth effect, this project aims to further our understanding of when repeated exposure may actually denote falsehood and of what happens when falsehood judgments are substituted for truth judgments.



March 2021 - March 2022

Post-doctoral researcher at UCLouvain, Belgium (2021-2022).
Supervisor: Prof. Olivier Corneille

Main topic: Evaluative conditioning (i.e., change of the valence of a neutral stimulus in the direction of the valenced stimulus it was paired with).

We studied whether "relational" evaluative conditioning procedures (e.g., a neutral stimulus is said to cause or prevent a valenced stimulus) create mixed feelings (as measured with mouse tracking and attitudinal ambivalence scales). Such a result would support the view that multiple attitude learning processes exist, rather than a single process. We also study whether effects found in "relational" evaluative conditioning procedures extend to "instructed" procedures, where no direct experience of the pairings is involved.



We studied whether attitude acquisition can be uncontrolled at all (e.g., if uncontrolled attitude formation exists, individuals may sometimes judge as negative a neutral stimulus paired with a negative stimulus, even if they oppose this impression formation). We developed a new paradigm in which a neutral stimulus is paired with two valenced US whose valence is the same (congruent trials) or opposite (incongruent trials). Participants have to form an impression of the neutral stimulus based on one valenced image while discarding the influence of the other valenced image.



We applied a method to test dissociation hypotheses about performance on direct and indirect attitude measures while preventing comparisons based on structurally unfitted tasks (which creates confounds).



As an aside, I also work on the truth effect (repetition increases statements' perceived truth) with the help of research assistants and students. We investigated whether evidence for the truth effect can be found on highly implausible statements (e.g., "The Earth is a perfect square"). We also tested whether using valenced pictures to provide truth judgments changes the size of the truth effect (i.e., responding "true" and "false" using a positive or a negative image).



Education

2020, December: PhD in Psychology
Title: The truth effect: Misattribution of familiarity to truth, or correspondence with contents retrieved from memory? Study of moderating effects of attention division and time interval, and generalization of the truth effect to conspiracism.
Université de Toulouse, Laboratoire CLLE (CNRS, UMR 5263), France

Supervisors: Prof. Patrice Terrier & Dr. Ophélie Carreras
Funded by the French ministry of higher education and scientific research.

PhD thesis available at (in French): https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-03560773/

2016: Ms in Psychology
Université de Toulouse, France

2014: Bachelor in Psychology
Université de Toulouse, France



Articles and working manuscripts

Béna, J., Lacassagne, D., & Corneille, O. (accepted). Do Uncontrolled Processes Contribute to Evaluative Learning? Insights From a New Two-US Process Dissociation Procedure and Ambivalence Measures. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Preprint available at: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/g274k.

Mattavelli, S., Béna, J., Unkelbach, C., & Corneille, O. (2024). People underestimate the influence of repetition on truth judgments (and more so for themselves than for others). Cognition, 105651. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105651 \ Preprint available at: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5mwpz

Béna, J., Rouard, M., & Corneille, O. (2023). You won’t believe it! Truth judgments for clickbait headlines benefit (but less so) from prior exposure. Applied Cognitive Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.4134

Corneille, O., & Béna, J. (2023). Instruction-based replication studies raise challenging questions for psychological science. Collabra: Psychology, 9(1), 82234. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.82234

Stahl, C., Béna, J., Aust, F., Mierop, A., & Corneille, O. (2023). A conditional judgment procedure for probing evaluative conditioning effects in the absence of feelings of remembering. Behavior Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02081-w \ Preprint available at: https://psyarxiv.com/rtqnx/

Béna, J., Rihet, M., Carreras, O., & Terrier, P. (2023). Repetition could increase the perceived truth of conspiracy theories. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30, 2397–2406. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02276-4 \ Preprint available at: https://psyarxiv.com/3gc6k/

Béna, J., Mierop, A., Bancu, D., Unkelbach, C., & Corneille, O. (2023). The role of valence matching in the truth-by-repetition effect. Social Cognition, 41(2), 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2023.41.2.193 \ Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369741504_The_Role_of_Valence_Matching_in_the_Truth-by-Repetition_Effect

Béna, J., Mauclet, A., & Corneille, O. (2023) Does mere co-occurrence influence evaluations independently of relational meaning? An investigation using subjective and objective ambivalence measures. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 152(4), 968–-992. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001308 \ Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363660570_Does_Co-Occurrence_Information_Influence_Evaluations_Beyond_Relational_Meaning_An_Investigation_Using_Self-Reported_and_Mouse-Tracking_Measures_of_Attitudinal_Ambivalence

Béna, J., Corneille, O., Mierop, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2022). Robustness tests provide further support for an ecological account of the truth and fake news by repetition effects. Accepted at International Review of Social Psychology, 35(1), 19, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.683

Béna, J., Melnikoff, D., Mierop, A., & Corneille, O. (2022). Revisiting dissociation hypotheses with a structural fit approach: The case of the prepared reflex framework. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 100, 104297. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2022.104297 \ Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358142779_Revisiting_Dissociation_Hypotheses_with_a_Structural_fit_Approach_The_Case_of_the_Prepared_Reflex_Framework

Corneille, O., & Béna, J. (2022). The “implicit bias” wording is a relic. Let’s move on and study unconscious social categorization effects. Commentary on the target article “Implicit bias ≠ Bias on Implicit Measures” from Gawronski, B, Ledgerwood, A., & Eastwick, P. W.. Psychological Inquiry, 33(3), 167–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2106754 \ Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361511604_The_implicit_bias_wording_is_a_relic_Let’s_move_on_and_study_unconscious_social_categorization_effects

Lacassagne, D., Béna, J., & Corneille, O. (2022). Is Earth a Perfect Square? Repetition Increases the Perceived Truth of Highly Implausible Statements. Cognition, 223, 105052. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105052 \ Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358280796_Is_Earth_a_Perfect_Square_Repetition_Increases_the_Perceived_Truth_of_Highly_Implausible_Statements

Mierop, A., Mikolajczak, M., Stahl, C., Béna, J., Luminet, O., Lane, A., & Corneille, O. (2020). How Can Intranasal Oxytocin Research Be Trusted? A Systematic Review of the Interactive Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin on Psychosocial Outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(5), 1228–1242. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620921525 \ Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339566469_How_Can_Intranasal_Oxytocin_Research_Be_Trusted_A_Systematic_Review_of_the_Interactive_Effects_of_Intranasal_Oxytocin_on_Psychosocial_Outcomes

Béna, J., Carreras, O., & Terrier, P. (2019). L’effet de vérité induit par la répétition: Revue critique de l’hypothèse de familiarité [The repetition-induced truth effect: A critical note on the familiarity hypothesis]. L’Année Psychologique, 119(3), 397–424. https://doi.org/10.3917/anpsy1.193.0397

Béna, J., Carreras, O., & Terrier, P. (preprint). On Believing Conspiracy Theories We Remember: Analyses of Two Large-Scale Surveys of Conspiracism in the French General Public. Under review. Preprint available at: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tf76n. Under review.