Illusory truth effect
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“”"Why are so many people convinced that we only use 10% of our brains, or that Eskimos have n words for snow, where n is as high as you need it to be for the desired rhetorical effect?"
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| — Chris[1] |
The illusory truth effect (also known as the truth effect, the illusion-of-truth effect, the reiteration effect, the validity effect, and the frequency-validity relationship) is the tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure to the claim in question. This is an illusion that appears due to unconscious cognition.
This phenomenon has been studied extensively, with the term first appearing in psychology literature from the late 1970s.[2] The illusion is now backed up by several psychology experiments.[3] The illusion is thought to be partly caused by the concept of processing fluency,
by which familiar concepts are more easily processed, tricking the mind into thinking something is true without any real evidence of it being so.
Even if a repeated falsehood is discredited in someone's mind, they will tend to forget why it was discredited and believe it upon recall ("the sleeper effect").[4] The Poynter Institute, a media literacy and fact-checking nonprofit, suggests one method for countering the illusory truth effect:
“”Be Positive: Rather than saying "Barack Obama is not a Muslim," say, "Barack Obama is a Christian." Negation can help reinforce the exact things we're attempting to debunk. It feeds into the illusion of truth.
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See also[edit]
External links[edit]
- See the Wikipedia article on Illusory truth effect.
- "Repetition increases belief in climate-skeptical claims, even for climate science endorsers", PLOS One
References[edit]
- ↑ The Truth Effect and Other Processing Fluency Miracles by mixingmemory (September 18, 2007) Science Blogs.
- ↑ Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity by Lynn Hasher & David Goldstein (1977) Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16:107-112.
- ↑ The Truth About the Truth: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Truth Effect by Alice Dechêne et al. (2009) Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(2):238-257. doi:10.1177/1088868309352251.
- ↑ Cathrine Jansson-Boyd (June 24, 2024). "Repeated political soundbites can influence how people think – even if they disagree with the message". The Conversation.
- ↑ Vicki Krueger (February 22, 2017). "6 ways to spread facts". The Poynter Institute.