Ted Anonymous - This Will Change Everything You Know

How liars create the 'illusion of truth'

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Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or non. Understanding this effect can help you avoid falling for propaganda, says psychologist Tom Stafford.

"Repeat a prevarication often enough and it becomes the truth", is a law of propaganda ofttimes attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Among psychologists something like this known as the "illusion of truth" event. Hither'southward how a typical experiment on the effect works: participants rate how truthful trivia items are, things like "A prune is a stale plum". Sometimes these items are true (like that one), but sometimes participants see a parallel version which isn't truthful (something similar "A appointment is a dried plum").

After a pause – of minutes or fifty-fifty weeks – the participants do the process again, but this time some of the items they rate are new, and some they saw earlier in the first phase. The key finding is that people tend to charge per unit items they've seen before as more likely to be true, regardless of whether they are true or not, and seemingly for the sole reason that they are more than familiar.

So, here, captured in the lab, seems to be the source for the maxim that if you repeat a lie ofttimes enough it becomes the truth. And if yous look around yourself, you may start to think that everyone from advertisers to politicians are taking advantage of this foible of human psychology.

But a reliable result in the lab isn't necessarily an important consequence on people's real-world beliefs. If you really could make a lie sound truthful past repetition, there'd be no need for all the other techniques of persuasion.

The 'illusion of truth' can be a dangerous weapon in the hands of a propagandist like Joseph Goebbels (Credit: Getty Images)

One obstacle is what yous already know. Even if a prevarication sounds plausible, why would yous fix what you know aside just because you heard the lie repeatedly?

Recently, a team led past Lisa Fazio of Vanderbilt University prepare out to test how the illusion of truth event interacts with our prior knowledge. Would it bear on our existing knowledge? They used paired truthful and un-true statements, but too split their items co-ordinate to how likely participants were to know the truth (so "The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean on Globe" is an example of a "known" items, which also happens to be true, and "The Atlantic Ocean is the largest body of water on Earth" is an un-true item, for which people are likely to know the actual truth).

Their results show that the illusion of truth upshot worked only as strongly for known equally for unknown items, suggesting that prior noesis won't foreclose repetition from swaying our judgements of plausibility.

To cover all bases, the researchers performed one written report in which the participants were asked to rate how true each statement seemed on a 6-point scale, and one where they simply categorised each fact as "true" or "faux". Repetition pushed the boilerplate item upwards the six-point calibration, and increased the odds that a statement would be categorised as true. For statements that were actually fact or fiction, known or unknown, repetition made them all seem more believable.

Repetition can fifty-fifty brand known lies sound more believable (Credit: Alamy)

At first this looks like bad news for man rationality, merely – and I can't emphasise this strongly enough – when interpreting psychological scientific discipline, you have to look at the bodily numbers.

What Fazio and colleagues actually found, is that the biggest influence on whether a statement was judged to be truthful was... whether it actually was true. The repetition effect couldn't mask the truth. With or without repetition, people were even so more likely to believe the actual facts every bit opposed to the lies.

This shows something fundamental about how we update our beliefs – repetition has a ability to make things sound more true, even when nosotros know differently, merely it doesn't over-ride that knowledge

The next question has to be, why might that be? The respond is to do with the effort it takes to existence rigidly logical about every piece of information yous hear. If every fourth dimension you heard something you assessed it against everything you already knew, you'd withal be thinking near breakfast at supper-fourth dimension. Because we demand to brand quick judgements, we adopt shortcuts – heuristics which are correct more often than wrong. Relying on how often you've heard something to judge how truthful something feels is merely i strategy. Any universe where truth gets repeated more than oft than lies, even if simply 51% vs 49% will be one where this is a quick and dirty dominion for judging facts.

The illusion of truth is not inevitable – when armed with knowledge, we can resist it (Credit: Getty Images)

If repetition was the only thing that influenced what we believed we'd be in trouble, but it isn't. We tin all bring to bear more extensive powers of reasoning, but we need to recognise they are a limited resource. Our minds are prey to the illusion of truth effect considering our instinct is to utilise short-cuts in judging how plausible something is. Often this works. Sometimes it is misleading.

Once nosotros know most the effect we can guard against it. Part of this is double-checking why we believe what we do – if something sounds plausible is it because it actually is true, or have we only been told that repeatedly? This is why scholars are so mad about providing references - so nosotros can track the origin on whatsoever merits, rather than having to take it on organized religion.

Merely role of guarding against the illusion is the obligation it puts on u.s.a. to finish repeating falsehoods. We live in a world where the facts matter, and should affair. If you repeat things without bothering to cheque if they are truthful, you are helping to make a world where lies and truth are easier to confuse. So, please, call up before you repeat.

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Tom Stafford'southward ebook on when and how rational argument tin change minds is out now. If yous have an everyday psychological miracle yous'd like to come across written about in these columns please get in touch with @tomstafford on Twitter, or ideas@idiolect.org.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.

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Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-of-truth

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