The Illusory Truth Effect (Blog Post #9)

 

The Illusory Truth Effect (Blog Post #9)

One question I’m interested in is, “Why do I fall for misinformation so easily when it’s repeated many times?”. This is known as the illusory truth effect. It occurs when we hear the same set of false information over and over, and eventually believe it to be true. This works because the more we hear the same information, the more we associate it with the truth. I found this video here very useful for understanding the theory. This video nicknames it “the repeated B.S. effect”.  

The illusory truth effect is harmful to both individuals and society. It can affect an individual, even if they believe they are above misinformation. Of course, the individual will be skeptical of the information at first before they go on to accept it. As an example, imagine that you are scrolling through Twitter. You see someone say that Justin Bieber has died. At first, you think that it’s all a joke since Justin Beiber is a seemingly healthy 29-year-old. You keep scrolling. More and more tweets pop up with the hashtag #RIPJustinBieber. You start to panic that your favorite artist has died! Little do you know that Justin Bieber is perfectly fine and you were just affected by the illusory truth effect.

This is obviously detrimental to society because it works like a domino effect. We are more likely to believe the same stuff as the people in our communities. Misinformation can spread like wildfire. I got one example from the same video above here. He was talking about former President Trump and how in his campaign he claimed to be a “great businessman”. If people found this to align with their beliefs, they would be more likely to believe it, even though you can’t really prove that he is a great businessman. He would repeat this over and over so that people would start to give him credibility and then end up voting for him. He wanted to look more qualified to be in office since he was a personality on the show The Apprentice.

This can affect anyone rich/poor, old/young, male/female, gay/straight, and in the minority/majority. I tend to find myself affected the most when I am scrolling on social media. This is because thanks to our 1st amendment, anyone can post anything they like. I know that a bunch of people act like news anchors on TikTok, even though they are nowhere near qualified. Who knows where they get their information from? And many of these accounts get more views when they share crazier stories that often are conspiracies. They are targeting gullible people who will fall for their lies.

So what is the bottom line? Why does this happen to us? It’s because we are cognitively lazy. According to The Decision Lab, behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman says our brain has two systems of thinking. System 1 is “fast and automatic” whereas System 2 does the “harder work”, which takes more effort. The human brain will tend to strive for System 1 since it is less straining. The illusory truth effect can be solved with a little extra thinking. We want to actually strive to use System 2 when taking in new information. This is important to keep in mind because misinformation can be found anywhere.