Participants judged the believability of simulated accounts varying in perceptual and emotional detail. In Experiment 1, both younger and older adults' tendency to believe that an account described an actually experienced event increased as either type of detail was added. In Experiment 2, while younger adults in a low suspicion condition judged the accounts with added details as more likely to be of actually-experienced events than the impoverished accounts, those given instructions designed to induce suspicion about the speakers' honesty found the more detailed accounts less believable. In Experiment 3, for both younger and older adults, both types of detail again increased believability ratings under low-suspicion conditions but did not affect ratings under high-suspicion conditions. In addition, there were systematic differences in the types of details the high- and low-suspicion participants reported using to make their judgments. Results are discussed in relation to the source monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) and reality monitoring and credibility judgments.