The “illusory truth effect” is a phenomenon on the rise with overload of information, or time-poor to fully digest information, or simply ‘whatever ~~what can I do about it’.
IMAGE: Etching, c.1650. licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Recent research conducted by Yangxueqing (Mary) Jiang, a PhD candidate in psychology at the Australian National University, sought to investigate a critical concern in today’s information environment: the proliferation of misinformation regarding climate change.
Editor’s example: I recently read a statistic that 80% of the world’s biodiversity are on Indigenous peoples’ land who represent about 5 to 6% of the global population.
It set off my ‘can’t-be’ concern-bells of why – when there is so much biodiversity becoming extinct, as the case in Australia. More complex. So I followed it up and noted that it had been quoted in many reputable publications – IISD – but actually, it was incorrect! Trust your intuition! Yeh!.
My disbelief was confirmed in a Conversation article, of how it had been picked up and replicated many times – 350- and peer-reviewed in scientific journals, in a World Bank report in 2008… from the possible source “ an encyclopedia chapter and a report on poverty” (Conversation,2024).
For more than two decades… treated as fact… it’s wrong.
Assembling the support to challenge the figure has taken five years.
National Geographic: Here+ WWF: Here+ Statista: Here+
The claim that Indigenous lands harbor 80% of biodiversity has been criticized for lacking rigorous empirical support, but remains important to recognize the significant role Indigenous peoples play in conservation and sustainable land management.
The “Illusory Truth Effect” through repetition can enhance the perceived truth of a statement. “Can”… being the operative word. Jiang and her colleagues aimed to extend this concept by exploring whether the same effect applies to deeply held beliefs, particularly those related to climate change.
Supporters of climate science consistently considered climate-science-aligned claims to be more credible than those from climate skeptics. However, when claims were repeated, participants found them more believable, even if those claims contradicted their existing beliefs about climate change.
This Study is a great read. It reminds me of the TRUMP-EFFECT in every way. Constantly fabricating the truth and incessantly repeating it… until some reach saturation with ‘whatever- what can I do about it?’. A lot!
The study, “Repetition increases belief in climate-skeptical claims, even for climate science endorsers,” was authored by Yangxueqing Jiang, Norbert Schwarz, Katherine J. Reynolds, and Eryn J. Newman.
Copyright: © 2024 Jiang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited..
