Repetition can make even the most bizarre claims seem more true

By guest blogger Emma L. Barratt The spread of misinformation over recent years poses huge dangers, and has so far proven extremely difficult to bring under control. Psychological research has revealed much of what brings people to believe false information, but the full picture is still far from complete, and new findings are bringing to light yet more factors that may maintain this problem. One example is the Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect — that repeating a statement increases how true it’s perceived to be. A prominent theory for why this happens emphasises the role of “processing fluency”; in essence, repetition makes the information easier to cognitively process, and this ease is misinterpreted as a signal that the information is true. Until recently, this phenomenon was thought to be limited to statements which could conceivably be true. But new research suggests that the effect extends much further, and can make even outlandish claims seem more truthful. Past work in the field had found that a single repetition of nonsensical claims like “The Earth is a perfect square” didn’t influence how true such statements were perceived to be. But this may have been because the methods weren’t sensitive enough to spot a small effect. To remedy this, Doris Lacassagne and colleagues at UCLouvain in Belgium showed participants more false statement repetitions than previous studies, and also had them respond on a scale with a substantially ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Cognition Source Type: blogs