Repetition increases Perceived Truth even for Known Falsehoods

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Fazio
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
False Statement ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
Different Types ◽  
News Headlines ◽  
Illusory Truth Effect

Repetition increases belief in false statements. This illusory truth effect occurs with many different types of statements (e.g., trivia facts, news headlines, advertisements), and even occurs when the false statement contradicts participants’ prior knowledge. However, existing studies of the effect of prior knowledge on the illusory truth effect share a common flaw; they measure participants’ knowledge after the experimental manipulation and thus conditionalize responses on posttreatment variables. In the current study, we measure prior knowledge prior to the experimental manipulation and thus provide a cleaner measurement of the causal effect of repetition on belief. We again find that prior knowledge does not protect against the illusory truth effect. Repeated false statements were given higher truth ratings than novel statements, even when they contradicted participants’ prior knowledge.

scholarly journals Repetition Increases Perceived Truth Even for Known Falsehoods

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa K. Fazio
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
False Statement ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
Different Types ◽  
News Headlines ◽  
Illusory Truth Effect

Repetition increases belief in false statements. This illusory truth effect occurs with many different types of statements (e.g., trivia facts, news headlines, advertisements), and even occurs when the false statement contradicts participants’ prior knowledge. However, existing studies of the effect of prior knowledge on the illusory truth effect share a common flaw; they measure participants’ knowledge after the experimental manipulation and thus conditionalize responses on posttreatment variables. In the current study, we measure prior knowledge prior to the experimental manipulation and thus provide a cleaner measurement of the causal effect of repetition on belief. We again find that prior knowledge does not protect against the illusory truth effect. Repeated false statements were given higher truth ratings than novel statements, even when they contradicted participants’ prior knowledge.

The Effect of Repetition on Truth Judgments across Development

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Fazio ◽  
Carrie Sherry
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Developmental Origins ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
Research Studies ◽  
Illusory Truth Effect

According to numerous research studies, adults who hear a statement twice are more likely to think that it is true compared to when they have only heard it once. Multiple theoretical explanations exist for this “illusory truth effect.” However, none of the current theories fully explain how or why people begin to use repetition as a cue for truth. This preregistered study investigates those developmental origins in 24 5-year-olds, 24 10-year-olds, and 32 adults. If the link between repetition and truth is learned implicitly, then even 5-year-olds should show the effect. Alternatively, realizing this connection may require metacognition and intentional reflection, skills acquired later in development. Repetition increased truth judgments for all three age groups and prior knowledge did not protect participants from the effects of repetition. These results suggest that the illusory truth effect is a universal effect learned at a young age.

scholarly journals An initial accuracy focus reduces the effect of prior exposure on perceived accuracy of news headlines

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin P. Calvillo ◽  
Thomas J. Smelter
Keyword(s):  
Prior Exposure ◽  
Cognitive Reflection Test ◽  
Initial Exposure ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Political Bias ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
Exposure Experiment ◽  
False News ◽  
News Headlines ◽  
Illusory Truth Effect

Abstract The illusory truth effect occurs when the repetition of a claim increases its perceived truth. Previous studies have demonstrated the illusory truth effect with true and false news headlines. The present study examined the effects that different ratings made during initial exposure have on the illusory truth effect with news headlines. In two experiments, participants (total N = 575) rated a set of news headlines in one of two conditions. Some participants rated how interesting they were, and others rated how truthful they were. Participants later rated the perceived accuracy of a larger set of headlines that included previously rated and new headlines. In both experiments, prior exposure increased perceived accuracy for participants who made initial interest ratings, but not for participants who made initial truthfulness ratings. The increase in perceived accuracy that accompanies repeated exposure was attenuated when participants considered the accuracy of the headlines at initial exposure. Experiment 2 also found evidence for a political bias: participants rated politically concordant headlines as more accurate than politically discordant headlines. The magnitude of this bias was related to performance on a cognitive reflection test; more analytic participants demonstrated greater political bias. These results highlight challenges that fake news presents and suggest that initially encoding headlines’ perceived truth can serve to combat the illusion that a familiar headline is a truthful one.

The Effect of Repetition on Truth Judgments Across Development

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (9) ◽  
pp. 1150-1160
Author(s):  
Lisa K. Fazio ◽  
Carrie L. Sherry
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Developmental Origins ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
Research Studies ◽  
Illusory Truth Effect

According to numerous research studies, when adults hear a statement twice, they are more likely to think it is true compared with when they have heard it only once. Multiple theoretical explanations exist for this illusory-truth effect. However, none of the current theories fully explains how or why people begin to use repetition as a cue for truth. In this preregistered study, we investigated those developmental origins in twenty-four 5-year-olds, twenty-four 10-year-olds, and 32 adults. If the link between repetition and truth is learned implicitly, then even 5-year-olds should show the effect. Alternatively, realizing this connection may require metacognition and intentional reflection, skills acquired later in development. Repetition increased truth judgments for all three age groups, and prior knowledge did not protect participants from the effects of repetition. These results suggest that the illusory-truth effect is a universal effect learned at a young age.

scholarly journals How Repetition Affects What Kids and Adults Believe

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raunak M. Pillai ◽  
Carrie L. Sherry ◽  
Lisa K. Fazio
Keyword(s):  
False Information ◽  
False Statement ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
Correct Information ◽  
Illusory Truth Effect

How do you know that something is true? Is it because you learned it in school? Is it because you heard it before? Our brains can remember a lot of information, but we do not always use this information when deciding what is true. Sometimes we use shortcuts like, “Have I heard this before?” rather than thinking about what we know. These shortcuts can lead us to make mistakes—like thinking that a false statement is true just because you have heard it many times. Researchers call this the illusory truth effect. People are more likely to believe information they have heard multiple times. This happens even when people should know that what they are hearing is wrong! They already have the correct information stored in memory, but repetition makes them think that false information is true. In this article, we discuss why this happens, and how this might affect kids like you!

The illusory truth effect: No repetition necessary

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Wright ◽  
Xiaoning Guo ◽  
Drew Brown ◽  
Chris Manolis ◽  
John Dinsmore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Truth Effect ◽  
Illusory Truth Effect

Reimagining American education: Possible futures: A curriculum that promotes civic ends and meets developmental needs

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 54-57
Author(s):  
Carol D. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Human Learning ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
American Education ◽  
Developmental Needs ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Future

If schools are to prepare students to participate more productively in civic life, schools will need to ensure that they have opportunities to practice the skills of civic reasoning, argues Carol Lee. Yet schools are challenged by the limits in the curriculum and the difficulty of addressing the different types of prior knowledge that students bring to the classroom. Lee suggests that when schools build their content and pedagogy on current understandings of human learning, they will be better able to enable students from all backgrounds to practice building the understandings they need, now and in the future.

scholarly journals Fake news, fast and slow: Deliberation reduces belief in false (but not true) news headlines

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bence Bago ◽  
David Gertler Rand ◽  
Gordon Pennycook
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Fake News ◽  
System 2 ◽  
False News ◽  
News Headlines ◽  
Classical Account

What role does deliberation play in susceptibility to political misinformation and “fake news”? The “Motivated System 2 Reasoning” account posits that deliberation causes people to fall for fake news because reasoning facilitates identity-protective cognition and is therefore used to rationalize content that is consistent with one’s political ideology. The classical account of reasoning instead posits that people ineffectively discern between true and false news headlines when they fail to deliberate (and instead rely on intuition). To distinguish between these competing accounts, we investigated the causal effect of reasoning on media truth discernment using a two-response paradigm. Participants (N= 1635 MTurkers) were presented with a series of headlines. For each, they were first asked to give an initial, intuitive response under time pressure and concurrent working memory load. They were then given an opportunity to re-think their response with no constraints, thereby permitting more deliberation. We also compared these responses to a (deliberative) one-response baseline condition where participants made a single choice with no constraints. Consistent with the classical account, we found that deliberation corrected intuitive mistakes: subjects believed false headlines (but not true headlines) more in initial responses than in either final responses or the unconstrained 1-response baseline. In contrast – and inconsistent with the Motivated System 2 Reasoning account – we found that political polarization was equivalent across responses. Our data suggest that, in the context of fake news, deliberation facilitates accurate belief formation and not partisan bias.

scholarly journals The effects of repetition frequency on the illusory truth effect

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aumyo Hassan ◽  
Sarah J. Barber
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Repetition Frequency ◽  
Processing Fluency ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
The Real ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
New Information ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Illusory Truth Effect

AbstractRepeated information is often perceived as more truthful than new information. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect, and it is typically thought to occur because repetition increases processing fluency. Because fluency and truth are frequently correlated in the real world, people learn to use processing fluency as a marker for truthfulness. Although the illusory truth effect is a robust phenomenon, almost all studies examining it have used three or fewer repetitions. To address this limitation, we conducted two experiments using a larger number of repetitions. In Experiment 1, we showed participants trivia statements up to 9 times and in Experiment 2 statements were shown up to 27 times. Later, participants rated the truthfulness of the previously seen statements and of new statements. In both experiments, we found that perceived truthfulness increased as the number of repetitions increased. However, these truth rating increases were logarithmic in shape. The largest increase in perceived truth came from encountering a statement for the second time, and beyond this were incrementally smaller increases in perceived truth for each additional repetition. These findings add to our theoretical understanding of the illusory truth effect and have applications for advertising, politics, and the propagation of “fake news.”

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