Everyone on social media should know about the Illusory Truth Effect If you see something repeated enough times, it seems more true. Multiple studies show that it works on 85% of people. Worse, it still happens even if the information isn't plausible & even if you know better.
Paper showing it works after just five repetitions for obviously false statements (“George Washington was born in China”); researchgate.net/publication/35… Knowing better does not help: apa.org/pubs/journals/… A lot of statements at the same time strengthens it. journalofcognition.org/articles/10.53…
@emollick Which is why disinformation mills use thousands of bots to repeatedly share their lies.
@emollick Straight out of the Goebbels propaganda playbook.
@emollick It's an extension of the Asche conformity experiments in the 1950s. Confederates would say line A is the longest, and outsiders would often agree even though they could 'see' it was objectively not. bit.ly/3UdthXq
@emollick @OphirGottlieb Masks work. There is a climate crisis. Russian collusion. Floyd died from police abuse. Endless examples.
@emollick This is basically how science works unfortunately, hence Amyloid beta and other debacles