The Illusory Truth Effect
‘if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes the truth’ - Joseph Goebbels
Can the simple repetition of a statement really be powerful
enough to cause us to believe it? Can we really be manipulated into believing a
false or misleading statement so easily? Psychological studies keep telling us
yes. The more a statement is repeated,
the more likely it is to be believed to be true,
and this regularly occurs even when people are told statements might be false
and disturbingly even when they know the actual truth.
Understanding and applying critical thinking skills will
generally protect us, but if we challenged everything we heard in our daily
lives we wouldn’t have time to do very much else. For efficiency we all use
natural mental short-cuts to judge information.
One strategy is to rely on how many times we have heard something to
judge how truthful it feels. We might
also believe information because we trust the person, people or organisation
repeating it. In fact, we are so used to
forming our beliefs around information we are told by trusted sources, that
when we come to believe something from repetition alone, we may come to believe falsely that we received the information from a reputable source.
Identifying a trustworthy source is generally an effective
shortcut, but only as long as the source remains unbiased and truthful. When we have mainstream media such as the generally
esteemed BBC that presents information in a biased way, manipulates the truth or blatantly lies,
this reliance becomes problematic. When
we have a general mainstream media including multiple Television broadcasters
and Newspapers that act with an agenda, providing a heavy bias towards only one
side of a debate and behaving like an antagonistic Attack dog rather than a Watchdog
over the information we are entitled to receive in a democratic society, we are
at risk.
Surely presenting the facts in the face of a baseless statement,
opinion or belief would be enough to correct this error? Unfortunately, we have another mental barrier
to cross. When we form beliefs around
what we repeatedly hear rather than through critical scrutiny of information
presented to us, those beliefs become increasingly difficult to alter. This is because beliefs are subject to
confirmation bias, where we have the tendency to embrace information that
supports our beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. In many cases even facts may not change minds.
When Jane repeatedly hears
an opinion repeated on the BBC news, ‘Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable, his ideas
are loony or unrealistic or that he is unpatriotic’ from a newsreader or
presenter she trusts, she presumes the opinion must be based on something, and
so believes it without question or research.
When she talks to her friend Tom who also heard these ‘facts’ repeated
in the ‘trustworthy’ newspaper he reads he agrees, solidifying her belief. Despite the opinion being baseless at every
stage, both may now develop strong feelings about the issue without any deep
understanding. When Jenny who has
researched the issue in depth provides Jane and Tom with honest and factual
information, they may reject her information, automatically focusing on the
plentiful information that supports their manipulated and baseless belief.
HOW PR AND MARKETING FIRMS USE THESE TECHNIQUES ONLINE
PR and Marketing companies understand this illusory truth effect
well and use it to their clients’ advantage in all sorts of ways. During election campaigns we know that if we
repeat false information about a candidate on TV it can cause the public to
believe it, and the same will happen if we repeat unfounded claims about a
product, subsequently boosting sales.
The online environment presented these organisations with a
different challenge and opportunity. People
with particular interests flock to groups and forums, interacting directly with
likeminded others. This provides a ripe
environment where large and relevant audiences can be precisely targeted with any
repeated message a client wants to impart, distort or disrupt. The beauty of this method is you can have
many people delivering a repeated message over and over again in multiple online
areas. In some cases companies have
employed only a handful of people who have each opened multiple accounts, so it
can look like tens or hundreds of people have a certain point of view and that many
agree with them, when there are only a few people repeating those views and
they are often paid handsomely to do so. Known as paid shills, facebook or twitter squads, this
method of message repetition is now common place. An added bonus of course is the ability for
those spreading propaganda to be able to deny it when challenged, and even play
the victim by acting offended that you might suggest they were anything but a
regular member of a group, and sometimes it really is difficult to tell (a
future article will explore this).
HOW PERCEPTION OF JEREMY CORBYN HAS BEEN MANIPULATED
The message that Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable has been
repeated in a powerful way over both mainstream media, and in groups where we
thought we were speaking to people who were online to have genuine debates
rather than manipulate us to think a specific way. It has happened in a blatant way where the
cry has been ‘Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable’, and more subtly where questions or
statements automatically presume, and so impart the message, that the former is
true ‘When are you going to resign?”. Repetitive
and often obviously scripted statements online have followed similar themes
with recent additions of posts beginning “I like Jeremy Corbyn but.....” and “When
I go out canvassing the public say they will not vote Labour if Jeremy is the
leader”. Statements such as these fall
flat of course when we contrast with the opposite message, ‘When I go out
canvassing the public say they can’t wait to vote for a ‘real’ Labour
leader’. Opinions like this are baseless
without independent studies that provide data, but they do create internal
dialogue, ‘Jeremy is no good for the party / unelectable’ vs ‘Jeremy is great
for the party / very electable’. The
message repeated most frequently is likely to become a truth to members of the
public who use the natural short cut method of sorting information rather than
having the time to critically challenge the facts.
SHAMING TECHNIQUE
To enhance the repetition rate of one message over another,
a shame inducing technique can also be applied to those stating the
opposite. If people who support Jeremy
Corbyn can be led to believe that their opinions are not only less valid, but
also betray a lack of intelligence or rationality, they will voice their
support less often because they will not want to be ridiculed. We
have seen this happen through character assassination and in statements that
portray effective socialist policies that would be viewed as mainstream in many
countries as “extreme left-wing”. Consider
also, what happened to Gary Lineker and Lilly Allen when they recently promoted
compassionate views. Those who ‘shame
induce’ know that they need to shut down opposing and challenging views as
quickly and forcefully as possible, precisely because they know others will
agree, follow by example and challenge the status-quo, don’t let them win.
CONCLUSION
The only way to counter this is for us to realise what is
happening, protect ourselves by applying critical thought to what we are told,
and to freely express ourselves. Respected
figures in the public eye have a very important role to play, as they are often
viewed as trusted sources. Ken Loach for
example, has not just challenged the false narrative on a factual basis, but he
has also emboldened others to gain the confidence in speaking out. Share your own opinion by all means but if
you have the power to challenge the narrative on a wide scale, you need to be
very sure you have critically challenged the information you have been fed by a
biased media, or you do a disservice to us all.
Most importantly, make your own choice about voting, and ensure you make it based on information and policies that are in your own and your family’s best interests. Do your own research and don’t allow opinion, including those expressed in this blog, to hamper your own critical scrutiny of what you being told.
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