Aha! moments give a “ring of truth” to completely unrelated statements

By Matthew Warren Word puzzles are all the rage right now. But if you’ve already done today’s Wordle, here are some anagrams to keep you going until tomorrow: Reality is only a matter of…..   tvesrecipep Free will is a powerful….. oinliusl If you managed to solve the anagrams at the end of these statements, you may have experienced a “Eureka” or “Aha!” moment, in which the solution suddenly seemed to appear, perhaps accompanied by a sense of happiness or relief. And if you did, according to a new study in Scientific Reports, you’d be more likely to believe that the statement itself is true. We’ve all experienced Aha! moments in our daily lives. They often seem to come out of nowhere after we’ve been stumped by a problem for a while, perhaps while we’re doing something else like having a shower. And generally, an Aha! moment is more likely to occur if we’ve arrived at the correct solution to a problem than if we’ve reached an incorrect one. In fact, because they are normally associated with finding the right solution, when we experience Aha! moments we get a gut feeling that what we’ve come up with is correct or true. But a 2019 study by Ruben Laukkonen at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and colleagues found that this intuitive response has a dark side: experiencing Aha! moments while reading false statements can make these statements seem true. In their new paper, the same group explored whether Aha! moments can a...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Cognition Creativity Decision making Thought Source Type: blogs