In which Wolf open day 23's door... Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/wcdMjYY60Lw
Welcome to the Beware of Wolf Advent Calendar of Bad Thinking. To celebrate the holidays, I'm counting down the days until Christmas with a common type of bad thinking each day, described in 60 seconds. This holiday season, give the gift of good thinking by sharing these videos with your friends!
This is Day 23: "The Illusory Truth Effect"
We are comfortable with the familiar and uncomfortable with things that are new to us. But research has found that we tend to believe things that feel familiar are also more likely to be true.
This is because the more times we're exposed to a statement, the faster the brain processes it, and we are likely to mistake this ease of processing, or "fluency," for truth. Unfortunately this is, "illusory truth."
When repeatedly given false statements like, "A sari is the name of the short plaid skirt worn by Scots," researchers found that people came to rate the statement as more true the more they heard it. It's a "kilt" by the way-- OR IS IT?
In 1972 Walter Langer writing about the mind of Adolf Hitler said,
"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."
When everybody around you is parroting the same talking points, that's when good thinkers like you should go dig deeper and make sure you're not just believing it because you've heard it over and over.
Happy Holidays!