Illusory Truth Effect
The Implications
What is it? Illusory Truth Effect- the tendency to believe false information is true after repeated exposure.
People tend to believe things to be true if they are in line with what they already believe. People are more likely to believe something if it goes with their values, morals, standards, or if someone in their immediate sphere of influence believes it to be true, who they look up to, or tend to relate the most to.
According to Wikipedia, in a recent study they found that familiarity can actually overpower rationality and constantly hearing something, even if it is wrong, can influence a person's beliefs very strongly. Basically, this is exactly what the illusory truth effect does, it just makes you believe something is true, when it is not, through repetition.
Affecting Society
As you can imagine, this has devastating effects on things like elections, news media, politics, and advertising.
After hearing a piece of information so many times, even when it is not true in this case, eventually the source of the information does not even matter. Typically, we tend to believe new information if it comes from a source we have interacted with before or has the same or similar view to us. In the illusory effect, after hearing something so many times, regardless if the source is not credible, you will still believe it. Now that poses a problem, doesn't it? Believing false information is one thing, but also believing a source that you know is not credible is another. It starts to become a thought like this, "Well, I know that news source is unreliable, but I have heard that from so many different people that they must be right, at least this time, concerning this." An issue, right? We practically start convincing ourselves to believe in things we normally would not, or sources we know better than to trust. If you think about it, it sounds like brainwashing, but brainwashing yourself. Obviously, this has a huge impact on society. Take voting in an election, for example. Say you have someone my age, 20s, a college student, new to voting, who does not know much about politics. On all platforms of social media targeted to our generation, we get political campaign adds all the time. Even if you do not know who the person is, or do not follow it, you are retaining some of the information you hear in the campaign video. Now imagine you decide to go vote, as you should, and you go to pick a governor and just associate a person's name with a snippet of the opposing runner's campaign against them and associate the two when you are there. Then, you think, "Oh, I remember hearing something bad about them, or that they wanted to raise taxes, so I am just going to vote for the other guy even though I dont know him or anything about him," This is just as much of a problem as believing incredible news sources. You are just associating the name with some piece of information that you do not even know to be true, from some platform you can't even remember to be credible.
Different Segment Effection
When I think of how this can effect different segments of society I think of the news sources and advertising. I hate to say this, but a lot of the time advertising is just a lie mixed with a good slogan. And the news? Can not even be trusted these days anyway. Advertising and news/media are two things that effect everyone on the planet, rich or poor. The news and media are skewed to favor the rich and pity the poor. With that being said, throw the illusory truth effect in there, and we have a nice recipe for disaster. When you are a kid and you see an ad for something on tv that you really want, the first thing you do is beg your parents and then save up the money when they say no, or wait for a holiday. Imagine wanting something so bad youve seen in an ad, but your parents, and you, can not afford it. However, the more you see the ad the more you know you NEED the item. Then, you get so driven to save your money for something that is probably not worth the money, because you are convinced you need it through so much exposure. That, and what if they tell you in the ad that this item has crazy affects. It'll make you psychic, fly to the moon, and become rich and famous. Then you waste time, money, effort, getting the product and believe it will change your life. This can get to all social classes, all levels of society, and every human being on earth who can comprehend english and owns a television.
How It Effects You and Me
Everyone and anyone can fall a victim to this. My best advice, since this can and will affect everyone, is just pick and choose carefully about what you believe. Fact checking your sources, online and in person, is never frowned upon. I do not think there is much of a way to escape something like this since it is all around us, so trying to mediate it and take everything with a grain of salt will put your mind at ease. Making informed decisions can be hard, but do your best with what you got. Listen to your gut, that will never steer you wrong.
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