Have you ever heard of the Illusory Truth Effect? Because I have not. But, when researching about the topic, I found some very interesting things. The definition of the Illusory Truth Effect is when you repeat false information enough, people will start to believe that it is true.
This theory is extremely important when it comes to propoganda because it is the reason as to why propaganda exists at all. There are many studies about Illusory Truth Effect, but the first study was in 1977 at Villanova and Temple University where truth was assessed to people and they needed to decided if it was true or false. One major event that researchers found when looking at this effect is that across all studies that they did, the participants were more likely to rate trivia statements as true if they thought that they had previously seen before.
This theory is extremely important when it comes to propoganda because it is the reason as to why propaganda exists at all. There are many studies about Illusory Truth Effect, but the first study was in 1977 at Villanova and Temple University where truth was assessed to people and they needed to decided if it was true or false. One major event that researchers found when looking at this effect is that across all studies that they did, the participants were more likely to rate trivia statements as true if they thought that they had previously seen before.
A major thing that researchers noticed, is how multiple participants would think something is true and would answer with confidence about the topic week after week. In the beginning, participants would see something and get asked if it was true or not and they would be hesitant about their answer, but after a while and after seeing the same headline or statement multiple times they answered confidently that they thought that this was true.
This topic is very intriguing to me because I think that it is very relevant in today's world, fake news is more common then most regular news due to the fact that now anyone can post anything on social media. When people see things online they automatically believe that it is true because ultiamately they have no reason in not believing the matter. But, fake news is obviously not true and this is where the Illusory Truth Effect comes into play. If someone puts out a story on Facebook about a plane crash, people will republish it, and so on and so on. Eventually, your entire news feed is covered with this article about this plane crash and more likely than not, you are going to republish it so that all your friends can see what happened. But in reality, this never happened, someone thought that it would be funny to see how many times they could get something republished or how many people would actually believe that this story was true.
Not only does this happen online, but it also happens in word of mouth, rumors. One person starts a rumor and they tell it to their friend and their friend tells it to their friend, etc. Again, more people find out and more people are telling you the same rumor over and over again and evenutally you believe that it has to be true because you have heard it from so many people.
Even though the Illusory Truth Effect was studied in 1977, it would probably be a good idea for researchers to do this study again and with fake news that is out in the world today. Because even though this effect was probably every common in the late 70's I can tell you that it is probably more relevant today and will continue to be on the rise. This is an issue that will probably not go away in this lifetime which is why it is so important to understand so that people can establish what is true or false.
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