Blog #8

 The Illusory Truth Effect

The Illusory Truth Effect is something that I find both very interesting and alarming. An easy way to remember what the Illusory Truth Effect is basically it is an illusion of the truth. This effect occurs when people start to believe that false information is true through repeated exposure. This is also known as a form of brainwashing. This is a commonly used technique among cult leaders, politicians and even marketing professionals. 

According to The Decision Lab the average human has to make about 35,000 decisions per day. Because the mass amount of information that is entering our brains every day, we as humans do not have enough time or energy each day to process all of this information. It is essentially a weakness in the brain that we can not critically analyze all of the things that are told to us. As a result of this a lot of the information that we hear we just believe to be true subconsciously. 

A common example of the Illusory Truth effect would be Vitamin C.  This example from The Decision Lab says that Vitamin C is a common misconception that it will actually boost your immune system to prevent a cold or getting sick. There is no actually scientific evidence of facts behind Vitamin C preventing colds this however because so many people think this and it is repeated so many times, a lot of people found it to be true. Because of this many people ran to the store to buy Vitamin C supplements and in fact this could have been something said by the companies producing them in order to sell their product. 

The website psychologicalscience.org says that " if repeated enough times, the information may be perceived to be true even if the source is not credible". The surprising thing about this is that even if a particular person knows that the information is false this method can still be effective. Every single person is susceptible to this even if they think they are smart or have a lot of knowledge on a topic.  

I personally have fallen a victim of this when my parents told me that if I swallowed gum, then it would not digest and it would stay in your stomach seven years. I thought that this was true when I was younger because my parents and siblings would tell me this time and time again whenever they gave me a piece of gum. I never actually critically thought about this and because I heard it so many times, I just found it to be true. 

This Illusory Truth effect can be very dangerous because of how effective it actually is. This can effect society as a whole because they can start to believe that false information is actually true just if they hear it enough times, even if it is not coming from a particularly credible source. This occurs a lot more than you would think and the best way to recognize it is to always be aware and not to automatically believe everything that your hear even if you hear it multiple times, it does not make the statement true.