How Repeating Lies Can Trick Your Brain

When it comes to believing things, our brains can be surprisingly easy to fool. This is especially true in the digital age, where we are constantly bombarded with information from all sorts of sources. Some of these sources are more trustworthy than others. Advertising, for example, is often not the most reliable source of information. Its main goal is to persuade people to buy products, not to provide unbiased facts. One trick that advertisers often use is repetition. They repeat their messages over and over again. This repetition can make the claims seem more true, even if they are not. This is known as the illusory-truth effect. It happens because repetition makes it easier for our brains to process the information. The easier something is to process, the more likely we are to believe it. But does this trick always work? What if people are already used to seeing a lot of ads? Will repetition still make them believe the claims? To find out, some researchers did two experiments. They showed people some product statements and then asked them to judge how true the statements were. Some of the statements were repeated, and some were new. In the first experiment, most of the statements were presented as scientific studies. In the second experiment, most were presented as ads. When people were just reading the statements, the illusory-truth effect happened. They rated the repeated statements as more true than the new ones. However, when people were told to focus on accuracy, something interesting happened. They judged the new statements to be just as true as the repeated ones. This shows that when we are paying close attention and trying to be accurate, repetition does not trick us as easily. The researchers found that this effect was the same no matter how many ads the people had seen. Whether they were used to seeing a lot of ads or not, repetition still made the statements seem more true, unless they were focusing on accuracy. This is important to keep in mind. It reminds us that we should always be critical of the information we receive, especially when it comes from sources that might not be entirely trustworthy.