Telling Something Over and Over Again Makes You Believe It Psychology

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• Published: 13 May 2021

The effects of repetition frequency on the illusory truth effect

Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications volume six, Commodity number:38 (2021) Cite this article

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Abstract

Repeated information is ofttimes perceived as more truthful than new data. This finding is known equally the illusory truth outcome, and it is typically thought to occur considering repetition increases processing fluency. Because fluency and truth are frequently correlated in the real world, people learn to use processing fluency as a mark for truthfulness. Although the illusory truth effect is a robust phenomenon, almost all studies examining it have used three or fewer repetitions. To address this limitation, we conducted two experiments using a larger number of repetitions. In Experiment 1, we showed participants trivia statements upwards to 9 times and in Experiment 2 statements were shown up to 27 times. Later, participants rated the truthfulness of the previously seen statements and of new statements. In both experiments, nosotros found that perceived truthfulness increased as the number of repetitions increased. However, these truth rating increases were logarithmic in shape. The largest increase in perceived truth came from encountering a statement for the second time, and beyond this were incrementally smaller increases in perceived truth for each additional repetition. These findings add to our theoretical understanding of the illusory truth event and have applications for advert, politics, and the propagation of "fake news."

Significance argument

Repetition can touch beliefs about truth. People tend to perceive claims as truer if they take been exposed to them earlier. This is known equally the illusory truth effect, and it helps explain why advertisements and propaganda work, and also why people believe fake news to exist truthful. Although a big number of studies have shown that the illusory truth effect occurs, very little research has used more than iii repetitions. Still, in the existent earth, claims are often encountered at much higher repetition rates. The goal of the current inquiry was to examine how a larger number of repeated exposures affects our judgments of truth. To exercise so, we conducted two experiments. In each experiment, we asked participants to read trivia statements such as "The gestation menses of a giraffe is 425 days". In Experiment 1, the trivia statements were shown either ane, 3, 5, vii, or ix times. In Experiment ii, the trivia statements were shown either 1, 9, 18, or 27 times. 1 calendar week later, we showed participants these same facts forth with new facts and asked them to charge per unit their truthfulness. In both experiments, we found that the more ofttimes that participants had previously encountered the trivia statement, the more truthful they rated it to be, but the largest increases in perceived truth occurred when people encountered a statement for the second time. Together these experiments show the powerful effect of uncomplicated repetition in affecting our judgments of truth.

The illusory truth effect

Not everything that we believe is true. For case, co-ordinate to a recent survey of teachers in Great United kingdom and The Netherlands, 48 per centum and 46 pct, respectively, falsely believed that people but use x per centum of their brains (Dekker et al. 2012; see also van Dijk and Lane 2020). Problematically, as a issue of this false belief, some people also have the misperception that "a piffling encephalon damage" is unimportant (Guilmette and Paglia 2004).

More than recently, there has been concern near the consequences of peoples' beliefs in misinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories nearly the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. In response to this wellness crisis, false information has been widely circulated. In fact, during the early stages of the outbreak, an assay of posts to the social media platform Twitter showed that most a quarter of all COVID-19 tweets independent misinformation (Kouzy et al. 2020). As ane concrete instance, during the early on days of outbreak, the Belgian newspaper Het Laastste Nieuws published an article suggesting that 5G, the cellular advice standard, might be linked to the evolution of COVID-19. Although this idea is not supported by scientific discipline, this claim has since been repeated multiple times in other forums (Ahmed et al. 2020), and a survey in the bound of 2020, showed that 5 per centum of UK residents believed that the symptoms of COVID-19 were linked to 5G mobile network radiation (Allington et al. 2020). Problematically, belief in this conspiracy theory was also associated with reduced wellness-protective behaviors (Allington et al. 2020), and since the initial newspaper article was published, there accept been 77 reported attacks on cellular towers in the UK and over 40 attacks on cellular repair workers (Reichert 2020).

Why do beliefs in myths, misinformation and faux news persist, despite having been clearly disproven? One contributing factor is likely the fact that people have been exposed to this data repeatedly. Consistent with this idea, inquiry has shown that repeated information is perceived as more truthful than new data. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect (for a review, run into Brashier and Marsh 2020) and was start reported by Hasher et al. (1977). In this experiment, participants were exposed to a list of plausible statements, some of which were truthful (eastward.g., Lithium is the lightest of all metals) and some of which were false (e.g., The capybara is the largest of the marsupials). Participants were asked to judge the truthfulness of each statement. This process was then repeated during a 2d and tertiary session. However, during these subsequent sessions, half of the statements had been previously encountered during the previous session(s), while the other half had not been encountered earlier. Results showed that with each successive session, participants rated the repeated statements equally more truthful than they had in the previous session. Furthermore, these repetition-related increases in perceived truth did not vary based upon the objective truth of the statements.

The illusory truth upshot, which is sometimes as well referred to as the repetition truth effect, has now been replicated many times, and a meta-analysis showed that when comparing verbatim repetitions to novel information it is a medium effect size (d = 0.53; Dechêne et al. 2010). The illusory truth effect has as well been demonstrated using a variety of different stimuli, including trivia statements (e.g., Bacon 1979), faux news headlines (Pennycook et al. 2018), product claims (Johar and Roggeveen 2007), opinion statements (Arkes et al. 1989), rumors (DiFonzo et al. 2016), and misinformation virtually observed events (Zaragoza and Mitchell 1996). The event occurs regardless of whether the time betwixt the repetitions is minutes (Arkes et al. 1989), weeks (Hasher et al. 1977), or fifty-fifty months autonomously (Brown and Zip 1996). Furthermore, the issue does non depend upon the source of the statements (Begg et al. 1992) and occurs even when participants are explicitly told that the source of the statements is unreliable (Henkel and Mattson 2011) or when the initial statement had a qualifier that cast doubt on the statement's validity (Stanley et al. 2019). Further evidence of the robustness of this issue comes from studies showing that the illusory truth outcome fifty-fifty occurs when the repeated statements are highly implausible (e.m., The earth is a perfect square; Fazio et al. 2019) or when the repeated statements directly contradict participants' prior knowledge (e.g., The fastest state animal is the leopard; Fazio et al. 2015).

Explanations of the illusory truth effect

A variety of dissimilar psychological explanations have been proposed to explain why repetition increases perceived truth (for a review, run into Unkelbach et al. 2019). However, the nearly commonly cited explanation is the processing fluency business relationship. Processing fluency refers to the metacognitive feel of ease or difficulty that accompanies a mental procedure (come across Alter and Oppenheimer 2009). According to the processing fluency business relationship, when information is repeated, it is processed more fluently and is consequently perceived to be more than truthful (e.yard., Unkelbach 2007; Unkelbach and Stahl 2009). This judgment occurs because nosotros accept learned over time that fluency (i.due east., a proximal cue) is predictive of truthfulness (i.eastward., a more distal property that is not readily appreciable; Unkelbach and Greifeneder 2013). Support for the processing fluency account comes from other research showing that illusions of truth can occur even without repetition, such that people rate data presented in piece of cake-to-read font (Reber and Schwarz 1999) or piece of cake-to-sympathise speech (Lev-Ari and Keysar 2010) as being more truthful than data presented in a less perceptually fluent format.

A farther explanation of why repetition increases processing fluency comes from Unkelbach and Rom's (2017) referential theory of truth. In cursory, this theory begins by noting that within a statement, the blended elements have preexisting degrees of semantic association with one some other. Sometime references are already coherently linked with one another (e.g., "student" and "teacher"), but other times they are non (east.g., "sailor" and "secretarial assistant"). Notwithstanding, when a statement is repeated, this repetition serves to increase the coherence between the composite reference elements. This in turn results in the argument beingness candy more fluently and therefore perceived as more than truthful. Thus, according to referential theory, processing fluency tin can be seen as an outcome of a memory network with coherent composite references (for farther word, see Unkelbach et al. 2019).

When contemplating how repetition will affect memory coherence and/or processing fluency, it is also of import to consider habituation effects. Habituation is a form of learning that occurs across species, and it refers to the fact that as the number of repetitions of a given stimulus increases in that location are exponential decreases in the frequency of the associated behavioral responses (for a review see Rankin et al. 2009). Habituation likewise occurs at the neural level in the grade of repetition suppression effects. Equally the number of repetitions of a given stimulus increases, there are exponential decreases in the firing rates of the neurons (for a review meet Grill-Spector et al. 2006). Repetition suppression effects are sometimes interpreted as an index of more than fluent processing of semantic representations (e.thou., Hasson et al. 2006; Henson 2003; Henson et al. 2002), which suggests that equally the number of repetitions increases, the respective increases in processing fluency become incrementally smaller. This finding in turn has important implications for the perceived truth of these statements: Equally the number of repetitions of a argument increases, at that place should likewise be incrementally smaller increases in the perceived truth of that argument. The overarching goal of the current enquiry was to test this hypothesis.

Number of repetitions and perceived truth

Although a large torso of inquiry has shown that repeated data is perceived as more true than new information, to our knowledge only four prior studies take used more than iii repetitions, and their conclusions have been mixed. Each of these prior studies is described in more detail below.

In a outset study past Arkes et al. (1991, Experiment 3), participants were asked to approximate the perceived truthfulness of statements across six different study sessions. Every bit expected, results showed that perceived truthfulness was higher in the 2d session as compared to the commencement session. However, pairwise comparisons of the ratings given in the subsequent adjacent study sessions were non statistically pregnant. Based upon this, Arkes et al. (1991) concluded that further repetitions practise not atomic number 82 to further increases in perceived truthfulness.

All the same, other research has suggested that larger increases in the number of repetitions can even so atomic number 82 to increases in perceived truthfulness. In a report by Koch and Zerback (2013), participants were presented with the single argument "microcredits reduced poverty in emerging nations" either 1, three, five, or 7 times. These repetitions were embedded in a newspaper article describing an interview with the founder of the microcredit loan arrangement. Structural equation modeling suggested that this statement was perceived as more truthful the more often that it was presented. All the same, this was obscured past the fact that in this context, repetition of this statement was too perceived to be a persuasion attempt, which in turn led to reactance and reduced belief in the statement's truth.

Finally, two other studies suggest that there may be a logarithmic relationship between number of repetitions and perceived truth. First, Hawkins et al. (2001) observed increases in truth ratings upwards to 4 repetitions, but each increment was diminished from the last. Besides, using a greater number of repetitions, DiFonzo et al. (2016) observed increases in truth ratings up to 6 repetitions (Experiments i and 2) and 9 repetitions (Experiment iii), with each repetition-related increment again being diminished from the last. Withal, conclusions from this study should be interpreted cautiously as only i statement was used per repetition condition, which may have reduced the reliability of the measure. Furthermore, these statements were presented every bit rumors inside a narrative story, which could potentially have been perceived equally a persuasion tactic, and hence reduced (rather than increased) perceived truth (Koch and Zerback 2013).

Thus, although we predict that increases in the number of repetitions should lead to logarithmic increases in perceived truthfulness, previous research examining this question has yielded contradictory conclusions, and the only two studies that accept used more than 6 repetitions presented the data in a narrative context (DiFonzo et al. 2016; Koch and Zerback 2013). To farther examine this question, nosotros conducted two experiments that varied in the number of repetitions. In Experiment ane, the trivia statements were shown up to 9 times, whereas in Experiment ii, the trivia statements were shown upward to 27 times. Inside each experiment, we commencement tested for the presence of the illusory truth effect (i.e., are repeated statements perceived as more truthful than new statements?). We then tested our prediction that there is a logarithmic (every bit opposed to linear) relationship betwixt repetition frequency and truth ratings.

Experiment one

Ability analysis and participants

An a priori power analysis using G*Ability 3.1 that specified a matched-pair t test with an blastoff level of 0.05, reported a minimum of 40 participants would exist required to achieve 90% power to observe a medium-to-large effect of d = 0.53, which is the average effect size of the illusory truth event reported in a prior meta-analysis (Dechêne et al. 2010). To account for attrition betwixt the ii written report sessions (see Procedure department) and data exclusions, we aimed to have 100 participants complete Session 1. Participants were recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk through the Turk Prime platform (world wide web.cloudresearch.com; Litman et al. 2017). There were 153 individuals who consented to participate, but only 95 completed Session one. One week afterwards, 78 of these participants returned, just only 66 fully completed Session ii. Of these participants, we so excluded the ten participants who failed one or more of the included attention checks (come across Procedure section). This left a final sample size of 51 in the analyses reported beneath.

Participants were required to be residents of the Usa and to be at to the lowest degree 18 years of age. The final sample (M _{historic period} = 33.27, SD = 7.81, range 20–55) consisted of 27 men and 24 women. They self-identified their race and ethnicity equally follows: 39 identified equally White or Caucasian, nine as Blackness or African American, and 3 equally Hispanic. Participants were likewise asked about their highest obtained level of education: 1 reported having a Ph.D., M.D., or J.D., 4 reported having a Chief's degree, 19 reported having a 4-year college Bachelor's degree, 6 reported having a ii-year college degree, xiv reported having some higher feel, and vii reported having a high school diploma or equivalent.

Materials and design

Stimuli consisted of a list of 100 trivia statements. Of these, 66 statements were adaptations of the questions from Nelson and Narens norms (1980) that were previously used past both Mutter et al. (1995) and past Henkel and Mattson (2011). Previous norming of this set of statements showed that they were relatively unknown, but that people perceived them as plausible (Mutter et al. 1995). Additional 34 trivia statements were found via online resource. These supplemental trivia statements were not normed, but were judged past the research team to also be plausible, but relatively unknown (e.chiliad., The attachment was invented in Norway). Thus, the truthfulness of the statements used in the current enquiry was ambiguous, which should increase the magnitude of the illusory truth effect (Fazio et al. 2019).

Whereas some prior studies have included both true and false statements, research has shown that repetition exerts equivalent increases in the perceived truth of previously unknown true and previously unknown false statements (eastward.grand., Hasher et al. 1977; Pennycook et al. 2018, Experiment 2), and repetition even increases the perceived truth of false statements that directly contradict prior knowledge (Fazio and Sherry 2020; Fazio et al. 2015). Given that the truth value of our chosen statements was expected to exist largely unknown to participants, and hence the veracity of the statements should non affect the repetition-related increases in perceived truth, we opted to only use factually accurate statements. In addition, because it can be difficult to reduce people'southward conventionalities that previously encountered misinformation is true (for a review see Lewandowsky et al. 2012), our utilise of simply factually accurate statements also ensured that participants did develop imitation behavior every bit a result of participation in this study.

For counterbalancing purposes, the 100 trivia statements were divided into 10 sets of 10 statements. In doing so, we ensured that statements pertaining to particular categories (e.m., geography facts) were distributed across the x sets. For each participant, 5 sets of facts were seen during Session 1 and corresponded to the v repetition conditions (one, iii, five, 7, and nine). During the Session 2 truth ratings (see Process section), all 10 sets of facts were shown: Five sets of facts were new items that did not previously appear during Session i and the other five sets of facts were previously seen during Session ane. Counterbalancing was used such that beyond all participants, each gear up of facts appeared as often as a repeated and new item, and when it was a repeated item, it appeared equally often beyond the v repetition weather. This resulted in x unlike counterbalanced versions of the experiment. ^{Footnote 1}

Process

All procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Lath (IRB) at Georgia State University (protocol H19217). Participation in this experiment consisted of 2 dissever sessions, separated by i calendar week. Each session was completed online, using either a reckoner or a mobile device.

Session 1 During Session 1, participants were randomly assigned to one of 10 versions of the experiment, which represented the counterbalancing of specific trivia statements beyond repetition type and session (encounter Materials and Pattern department). Participants then provided consent and completed a demographics questionnaire. Participants side by side saw a series of trivia statements and rated how interesting they constitute each statement. They were instructed that some trivia statements would be shown more than than in one case; however, for each statement they should rate how interesting they found information technology at that very moment. The participants then saw the trivia statements one at a fourth dimension in a random order. Each trial consisted of the presentation of the trivia argument for 4 s. After this, the statement disappeared from view and participants were asked to rate how interesting the statement was on a calibration of 1 (not interesting) to 6 (very interesting). These ratings were self-paced.

Over the course of this Session 1 job, participants saw l statements. Each statement was presented either one, three, five, seven, or nine fourth dimension(s) and in total there were 10 statements in each repetition condition. This made for 250 trials. Additionally, iii attention bank check trials were also included. These attention cheque trials simply stated: Please select X for the adjacent rating, with X being either the reply choice of 1, 2, or 3. The order of the 253 trials was randomized (although the precise randomization order that was used for each participant was not recorded). On average, participants spent 54.87 min completing the Session i tasks and were compensated $4.fifty for their participation.

Session ii Consistent with previous research (due east.g., Arkes 1989; Boehm 1994; Fazio et al. 2015), ane week later participants were invited to complete a second study session. During Session ii, participants were shown our entire list of 100 statements. Of these, 50 had been previously seen during Session 1 and 50 were new statements. We chose to use a mixed-list of repeated and new facts as this should create variability in the fluency of the statements, which should increase the likelihood of observing illusory truth furnishings (east.thousand., Dechene et al. 2009; Garcia-Marques et al. 2019). The 100 statements were presented in a random order, 1 at a fourth dimension, and participants were asked to charge per unit how truthful they found each statement on a scale of ane (non truthful) to half-dozen (very truthful). Participants were instructed that we were interested in their own perceptions about the truthfulness of the statements, and were told not to expect upwards any of the statements while completing the job. During Session 2, ii attention check trials, similar to those used in Session 1, were also included. On average, participants spent 13.78 min completing the Session two tasks and were compensated $three.50 for their participation.

Results

We first evaluated whether or not nosotros replicated the illusory truth effect. Equally in prior research, in a matched-pair t test, we institute that repeated statements elicited higher truth ratings (M = iv.49, SD = 0.60; collapsing across repetition conditions) compared to the never-before-seen statements (G = three.76, SD = 0.67), t(50) = 7.xvi, p < 0.001, d = 1.00. ^{Footnote 2}

We adjacent evaluated our hypothesis that there would be a logarithmic (as opposed to linear) relationship between the number of times a statement was repeated during Session ane and perceptions of truth during Session 2. To exercise and so, for each participant we calculated the correlation coefficient betwixt their Session ii truth ratings and the number of Session ane repetitions (0, 1, three, 5, 7, 9), and too between their Session two truth ratings and the log of the number of Session ane repetitions (for a similar procedure, run across Gild et al. 2014). In both cases, we added a constant of 1 to the number of Session 1 repetitions, to account for the fact that the log of 0 is undefined. ^{Footnote iii} On average, truth ratings had a moderate-to-big correlation with the linear scaling of the Session 1 repetitions (mean r = 0.46, SD = 0.43; range of rs = -0.72 to 0.93; correlations were greater than zero for 88% of participants). Truth ratings also had a big correlation with the logarithmic scaling of the Session ane repetitions (hateful r = 0.52, SD = 0.44, range of rsouth = -0.57 to 0.98; correlations were greater than aught for 84% of participants). However, a matched pair t-test showed that the magnitude of the correlation was significantly greater when using the logarithmic scale, as compared to the linear scale, t(50) = iv.83, p < 0.001, d = 0.67 (see Fig. 1).

Fig. i

Mean Truth Ratings every bit a Office of Number of Repetitions in Experiment i and Experiment 2

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As shown in Table i, follow-upwards Bonferroni-adapted pairwise comparisons showed that there were big differences in perceived truth between the never-before-seen items and the previously seen items. The new statements were rated as significantly less truthful than statements in the 1, 3, 5, 7, and ix repetition weather (i.e., in that location was an illusory truth effect). However, there were fewer significant differences between items from the other repetition weather. In fact, the merely other significant pairwise comparing was between statements in the 1 and 9 repetition conditions.

Table 1 Experiment 1 truth ratings every bit a function of repetition condition and the pairwise comparison effect sizes between repetition conditions

Full size table

Experiment 2

Although Experiment 1 showed that increased repetitions were associated with logarithmic increases in truth ratings, one limitation of this written report is that our maximum number of repetitions was 9. To address this, in Experiment 2 we repeated the facts either 1, 9, 18, or 27 times. We chose intervals of 9 repetitions because the Experiment 1 results showed a significant difference in the perceived truthfulness of items previously presented once versus 9 times.

In Experiment 2, we too express our sample to younger adults, aged 18 to 35. Prior research has shown that older adults demonstrate greater illusory truth effects than younger adults (Law et al. 1998). Replicating this, in Experiment 1 nosotros also establish that the difference in truth ratings between old and new items was larger with increasing age, F(1, 49) = 7.05, p = 0.011, η _p ⁱⁱ  = 0.xiii. Although none of the Experiment ane conclusions change when including age as a factor (i.e., regardless of whether participants were relatively older or relatively younger, in Experiment 1 the logarithmic scale was more strongly related to truth ratings than the linear scale), to reduce variability in illusory truth furnishings, in Experiment 2 we express our sample to individuals aged 18 to 35.

Participants

Using the same recruitment strategies as in Experiment 1, there were 151 individuals consented to participate in Experiment 2, but only 100 completed Session ane. One week later, 70 of these participants returned, but only 64 fully completed Session 2. As in Experiment ane, we then excluded the vii participants who failed ane or more of the included attending checks (run into Procedure section). This left a final sample size of 57 in the analyses reported beneath.

Participants were required to exist residents of the USA, anile eighteen to 35. Within the final sample, participants were on boilerplate 29.46 years erstwhile (SD = 3.49, range 21–35). Although all participants reported their historic period, due to experimenter error nosotros did not appraise gender, racial identity, or educational attainment in all eight of the balanced versions of the experiment (come across Materials and Design section). Gender was merely assessed in two versions: Of participants asked this question at that place were eight men and 8 women. Race was assessed in 7 versions, with these participants self-identifying every bit follows: 38 as White or Caucasian, 5 as Blackness or African American, three equally Asian, 1 equally American Indian or Alaska Native, 1 equally Biracial, and 2 did not identify with any of the provided racial identity choices. Educational attainment was only assessed in ii versions: Of participants asked this question 6 reported having a 4-twelvemonth college Bachelor'due south degree, 2 reported having a 2-yr college caste, 3 reported having some college experience, 5 reported having a high school diploma or equivalent, and one reported having some loftier schoolhouse.

Materials and pattern

The list of 100 statements used in Experiment 1 was pared downward to 64 statements. This was done pseudorandomly with the constraint that we maintained diversity in the wide categories of trivia facts represented. For instance, we ensured that we were not discarding all of the statements related to animals or all of the statements related to geography. The statements were then divided into eight sets of eight statements. For each participant, iv sets were used during Session ane and corresponded to the four repetition types (1, 9, 18, and 27). The other four sets were used as new items during Session 2. Counterbalancing was used such that across participants, each set appeared equally often as a repeated or new items, and when it appeared as a repeated item, appeared equally oftentimes across the four repetition types. This resulted in eight different counterbalanced versions of the experiment.

Procedure

The procedure for Experiment 2 was canonical past the IRB at Georgia State University (protocol H19217) and was identical to Experiment 1 with the following exceptions. First, the ratings during Session 1 were not self-paced. In society to standardize the amount of time spent viewing the statements, participants were given iv southward to view each fact, followed past 4 due south to rate their current involvement in the fact.

2d, equally noted to a higher place (see Materials and Design), during Session 1 of Experiment 2 the statements were presented either 1, 9, xviii, or 27 time(s). As at that place were 8 statements in each repetition condition, this made for 440 disquisitional trials. With the add-on of 3 attention trials, the full number of trials was 443 (as opposed to 253 in Experiment 1).

Third, at the end of Session 2 nosotros also asked participants whether they had looked up, or discussed with others, whatever of the Session i facts during the prior calendar week. Only three participants reported having washed and then, and these participants further reported that this affected two or fewer of the Session one facts. Excluding these participants did non alter any of the reported patterns of results, and hence, they were retained in the subsequent analyses.

On average, participants spent 68 min completing Session 1 and 13.84 min completing Session 2 and compensated $7.25 and $iii.75, respectively. ^{Footnote 4}

Results

We outset tested for the illusory truth effect using a matched-pairs t exam. Results showed that the repeated statements (K = 4.66, SD = 0.86; collapsing across repetition conditions) elicited college truth ratings compared to never-before-seen statements (M = iii.64, SD = 0.65), t(56) = 8.22, p < 0.001, d = 1.09.

We next tested our hypothesis that at that place would be a logarithmic (as opposed to linear) human relationship between the number of times a argument was repeated during Session ane and perceptions of truth during Session 2. As in Experiment i, we correlated each participants' average truth ratings during Session 2 with both the number of Session 1 repetitions (0, 1, nine, 18, 27), as well as with the log of the number of Session 1 repetitions. In both cases, nosotros added a constant of i to the number of Session 1 repetitions, to business relationship for the fact that the log of 0 is undefined. As in Experiment 1, truth ratings tended to accept a moderate-to-big correlation with the linear scaling of the Session 1 repetitions (mean r = 0.47, SD = 0.43; range of rdue south = -0.84 to 0.95; correlations were greater than zero for 82% of participants). Truth ratings likewise tended to take a moderate-to-big correlation with the logarithmic scaling of the Session 1 repetitions (mean r = 0.56, SD = 0.44, range of rs = -0.82 to 0.99; correlations were greater than zip for 86% of participants). However, a matched-pair t test showed that the showed that magnitude of the correlation was significantly greater when using the logarithmic scale, as compared to the linear scale, t(56) = 8.22, p < 0.001, d = 0.63 (encounter Fig. 1)

As shown in Table 2, this conclusion was further supported by follow-up Bonferroni-adapted pairwise comparisons. Here, we constitute that new statements were rated as less truthful than those previously seen i, 9, eighteen, or 27 times. However, there were very few statistically pregnant differences between items from the other repetition atmospheric condition. Statements in the 1 repetition condition were rated significantly less truthful than statements in the 9, eighteen, and 27 repetition weather condition. However, no other comparisons betwixt repetition conditions were found to be statistically significant.

Table 2 Experiment ii truth ratings every bit a role of repetition condition and the pairwise comparison effect sizes between repetition conditions

Full size table

Discussion

The goal of this research was to test the hypothesis that the more oftentimes data is encountered, the more truthful that data is perceived to be, and that this human relationship is logarithmic in nature. To exam this, we asked participants to read trivia statements, which were repeated upwardly to 9 times in Experiment 1 and up to 27 times in Experiment ii. Ane week later, participants saw these same trivia statements alongside the new statements and were asked to approximate the truthfulness of each statement. Equally expected, in both experiments we replicated the illusory truth effect such that repeated statements were perceived every bit more truthful than new statements. We also found that perceived truthfulness increased as the number of repetitions increased, and in line with our predictions, these increases were logarithmic in nature. In both experiments, the largest increases in perceived truth came from encountering a statement for the second fourth dimension. However, across this, in that location were progressively smaller increases in perceived truth for each boosted repetition, which were not statistically meaning beyond 9 repetitions.

These findings support the predictions based upon both the processing fluency account and also based upon the referential theory of truth. They are also consistent with enquiry by Hawkins et al. (2001) who constitute that repeating information up to 4 times results in progressively smaller increases in truth ratings. Likewise, DiFonzo et al. (2016) institute a logarithmic relationship, such that repeating information upwards to 9 times also results in progressively smaller increases in truth ratings. We replicate their findings using a larger number of items outside of a narrative context (Experiment ane) and extend their results by showing that this blueprint continues up to at to the lowest degree 27 repetitions (Experiment ii).

In addition, our results—merely not our conclusions—are also consistent with those reported by Arkes et al. (1991, Experiment 3). As in their study, we found that even though data shown for the 2nd time was rated as significantly more than truthful than new information, pairwise comparisons of truth ratings for the subsequent repetition conditions were rarely statistically significant. For instance, in our Experiment 1, the truth ratings for the statements presented 3 times did not significantly differ from the truth ratings for the statements presented 5 times (run into Tables one, 2). Based upon similar cipher results, Arkes et al. (1991) concluded that while a first repetition increases perceived truth, subsequent repetitions exercise non. In contrast, we conclude that while a first repetition produces the largest increase in perceived truth, subsequent repetitions produce subsequent increases in truth that are incrementally diminished in size. Equally a result, statistically meaning increases in perceived truth may only occur after a large number of additional repetitions. Furthermore, because a logarithmic function has no asymptote, theoretically, information technology stands to reason that repetitions will elicit college and higher truth ratings indefinitely. Withal, at some indicate these incremental increases in perceived truth will get so pocket-sized in magnitude that they no longer have applied value.

Understanding the practical value of increased repetitions is important because the illusory truth effect affects important daily life decisions (for farther discussion, see Unkelbach et al. 2019) and our findings are highly relevant within the realms of politics and "false news." For example, using actual fake-news headlines from the 2016 US presidential election, Pennycook et al. (2018) constitute that the more than often that participants were exposed to these headlines, the more than likely they were to believe them to be truthful. This occurred even when the headlines were conspicuously tagged equally existence faux facts, and when their content was inconsistent with the participants' own political credo. Although this demonstrates that a unmarried encounter with a imitation news story will make information technology seem more truthful, in our daily lives nosotros sometimes meet faux information repeatedly. For example, during his 2016 campaign to be elected equally President of the USA, Donald Trump stated 86 times that the structure of a wall betwixt the USA and Mexico had already begun (see Murray et al. 2020). Although this was false, our results suggest that each time this merits was repeated, its perceived truthfulness incrementally increased.

These results are too relevant for understanding the public's response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Our results propose that the more oft messages about COVID-19 are repeated, the more than truthful they will be perceived. The consequences of this can exist positive or negative, depending upon the validity of the messages. An case of this comes from Bursztyn, Rao, Roth, and Yanagizawa-Drott'southward (2020) analyses of the human relationship between viewers' health outcomes and the coverage of COVID-19 they had seen on Hannity and Tucker Carlson This evening. Although these cablevision news shows are both broadcast on Fox News, beginning in early Feb of 2020, Carlson warned viewers that COVID-19 might pose a serious health threat to the USA. In contrast, Hannity originally claimed that COVID-nineteen was no dissimilar than the flu and was existence used by Democrats equally a political weapon. Hannity only began to draw COVID-19 as a threat in mid-March of 2020. Existence exposed to these repeated letters was associated with adverse wellness outcomes for the Hannity viewers. In a survey of Fox News viewers aged 55 of older in April 2020, a one standard difference higher viewership of Hannity (relative to Carlson) was associated with 33% more than COVID-19 cases on March 14th, and 34% more COVID-xix deaths on April 4th. Presumably this occurred because the messages about COVID-19 had been repeatedly presented on the news, and were believed by the viewers. This in turn may take had a ripple issue, as people are too more likely to share with others information that they have repeatedly encountered (Effron and Raj 2020).

A final domain for which the electric current experiments' findings are relevant is advertising. Prior inquiry has shown that repeated advertisements are associated with people perceiving the advertised product as higher in quality (Moorthy and Hawkins 2005), and our results advise that it may also increase perceived truth of the advertisement message. Nevertheless, ane cistron that often moderates advertizing repetition effects is the number of advertisements (e.thousand., Burton et al. 2019; Kohli et al. 2005). For instance, results of a meta-analysis suggest that there are increases in positive attitudes with upward to 10 exposures of an advertisement, later which there are decreases in positive attitudes (Schmidt and Eisend 2015). The terms "habiliment-in" and "wearable-out" are used to describe these effects. An advert is "worn in" when the repetition initially garners a positive consequence and is "worn out" when the repetition produces no effect or even a negative i (Pechmann and Stewart 1988).

Consistent with this idea, data from Experiment 2 suggest that repetition-related increases in perceived truth may exist "worn out" after nine repetitions. As shown in Fig. i, after 9 repetitions the truth ratings appear to approach an asymptote, and later on this point the practical value of farther repetitions may exist limited. Although we did non detect any testify that repetitions beyond this negatively touch on perceived truth, it is possible that an inverse U-shape may have occurred if we had used a persuasion context (such every bit would occur during advertising). This is consequent with prior research from Koch and Zerback (2013). As previously described, participants in this study read a newspaper interview with the founder of microcredit loans. Embedded in this interview was the statement "microcredits reduced poverty in emerging nations," which was repeated either ane, 3, 5, or seven times. Results from a structural equation model suggested that increased repetitions lead to increased belief that microcredit loans decrease poverty in emerging nations. Nevertheless, increased repetitions also led participants to trust the communicator less, and to believe that the message was a persuasion endeavor. As a upshot, participants who heard statements multiple times interpreted the reason for those repetitions as an intent to persuade them, and demonstrated reactance past rating the argument lower in truthfulness.

It is besides possible that nosotros did not observe an inverse U-shaped bend because we did non include a sufficient number of repetitions. Support for this possibility comes from research on the mere-exposure result. This is the finding that repeated exposure to an initially neutral and unfamiliar stimulus results in greater liking of that stimulus (Zajonc 1968), and this is thought to reflect repetition-related increases processing fluency (Reber and Schwarz 2001; Reber et al. 1998). Nevertheless, a meta-analysis shows that the relationship between repetition and liking resembles an inverted U-shaped curve. More specifically, liking continues to increment up to about 62 repetitions, but after this betoken boosted repetitions lead to declines in liking (Montoya et al. 2017; see also Bornstein and D'Agostino 1992). If a tiptop in perceived truth occurs after a like number of repetitions, the current experiments would not have observed it. Statements were repeated a maximum of 9 times in Experiment one and 27 times in Experiment ii. Thus, future research examining the relationship betwixt repetition and perceived truth should include an fifty-fifty greater number of repetitions.

Future studies should as well address the limitations that were present in these experiments. The kickoff being that we did not assess whether or not whatsoever of the statements included were previously known to each participant. While we could have assessed pre-experimental cognition of the facts, it has been shown that prior cognition does not shield 1 from the illusory truth effect (Fazio et al. 2015). Information technology is therefore likely that the patterns reported here would have emerged fifty-fifty for misinformation or faux news that contradicted prior cognition.

A second limitation has to do with the presentation and length of the study sessions. In these studies, participants read trivia statements in blackness text on a white background for over an hr on their phones or computers. This may have contributed to heed-wandering and colorlessness, and fifty-fifty though all participants included in analyses passed our attention checks, they may not have given the statements their full attention. This reduced considerateness may actually have maximized the illusory truth effects that were observed. For instance, Hawkins and Hoch (1992) institute what they termed "low-interest" learning was a key factor to observing the illusory truth consequence. When participants were exposed to advertizing statements, those who engaged in the "low-involvement" learning chore (i.east., those who were asked to charge per unit the statements based on how easy they were to sympathise) experienced stronger subsequent illusory truth effects than those in the "high-involvement" learning task (i.e., those who were asked to rate statements based on how truthful they were). It appears that deeper engagement while processing the argument tin protect one from repetition-based illusory truth effects. Consistent with this, Brashier et al. (2020) recently plant that participants who were actively involved in "fact-checking" the presented statements showed a reduced illusory truth event (at least when they had the requisite knowledge to perform the job).

A final limitation is that nosotros did non examine the office of repetition spacing in modulating the magnitude of the illusory truth effect. In the current experiments, the trivia facts (and their repetitions) were presented in a random guild for each participant during the first study session, just unfortunately these randomization orders were not recorded. Given prior inquiry showing that neural repetition suppression is reduced for spaced, as compared to massed, repetitions (due east.chiliad., Xue et al. 2011), it is reasonable to hypothesize that illusory truth effects should besides be greater following spaced, every bit compared to massed, repetitions. Preliminary results from our laboratory support this hypothesis (Hairdresser et al. 2020), and ongoing inquiry is at present examining the combined influence of the number of repetitions and the spacing of those repetitions in affecting perceived truth.

In summary, our results advise that the more often information is repeated, the more likely it is to be believed. This is important since we often come across information whose validity is unknown. Although assertive repeated information to be true is evolutionarily efficient in a context where most of the information encountered is right, it can be detrimental to believe information that is incorrect. Sometimes these consequences can be trite: If yous are repeatedly shown the false statement "Salty water boils faster," you may come to believe this to be truthful. Notwithstanding, interim on this false belief will only slightly elongate your cooking time. In contrast, other times the consequences can be life-threatening: If you are repeatedly told that "COVID-xix is no more than dangerous than the common cold," yous may come to believe this to be true, merely acting on this fake belief may increase your risk of infection and death. Although our studies did not use fake news, conspiracy theories, or misinformation for stimuli, our results shed light on the mechanism underlying illusory truth effects, and suggest that repeated exposures likely atomic number 82 to increased belief. In addition, our results suggest that the largest increases in perceived truth come from hearing information a 2nd fourth dimension. Going beyond this, subsequent repetitions lead to progressively smaller increases in perceived truth. Withal, after ix repetitions these increases may no longer be practically meaningful.

Availability of information and materials

Data and written report materials are available from the corresponding author upon asking.

Notes

1. Due to attrition and information exclusions, the balanced versions of the statements were not evenly represented in the final samples of Experiment 1 or Experiment 2. However, when including counterbalance version number as a factor in analyses, there were no main effects or interactions to study. In addition, the sets of facts did not significantly differ in the truth ratings they received the first time they were shown. Weigh version volition therefore not be discussed further.

3. As a concrete example, presume that a participant'south boilerplate truth rating for the new items (seen 0 times during Session ane) was 3.75. Also assume that this aforementioned participant'due south average truth ratings for the repeated items were 4.vi, 5.9, 6.0, 5.7, and 6.0 for items seen one, 3, 5, seven, and 9 times during Session 1, respectively. Adding a constant of 1 to each repetition status, this participant'southward truth ratings would have a correlation of r = .eighty with the linear number of Session 1 repetitions (1, 2, four, half dozen, viii, 10), but a correlation of r = .93 with the log of the number of Session 1 repetitions (1, 0.30, 0.threescore, 0.78, 0.90, one.0).

4. In Experiment 1, participants took longer than expected to complete Session 1. In Experiment 2 we standardized the corporeality of time spent rating the Session 1 statements, and increased the compensation to better reflect the amount of fourth dimension that participants spent completing the task.

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Acknowledgements

Non applicable.

Funding

Publication costs were paid past Georgia State Academy. Participant compensation came from departmental funds, provided to the Southward.J.B.

Author information

Affiliations

1. Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, Indigenous Studies & Psychology Building, San Francisco, 94132, California, USA

   Aumyo Hassan

2. Section of Psychology, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 5010, Atlanta, GA, 30302, The states

   Sarah J. Barber

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Data reported in this manuscript served equally the basis of the A.H.'s M.A. thesis under the supervision of South.J.B. The ii authors contributed equally to the design of the studies. A.H. programmed the experiments, performed initial information analyses, and prepared the first draft of this manuscript. The second author provided consultation on each of these steps and besides contributed essentially to the preparation of this manuscript for publication. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sarah J. Barber.

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All procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Georgia Country Academy (protocol H19217). Participants provided informed consent before get-go the study.

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Hassan, A., Hairdresser, S.J. The effects of repetition frequency on the illusory truth outcome. Cogn. Research 6, 38 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-021-00301-five

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• Received: 29 July 2020

• Accepted: 28 April 2021

• Published: thirteen May 2021

• DOI : https://doi.org/x.1186/s41235-021-00301-5

Keywords

• Illusory truth
• Repetition
• Fluency
• Belief
• Truthfulness

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Source: https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41235-021-00301-5

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