Who said repeat a lie often enough

See All Quotes. Logging out…. Logging out You've been inactive for a while, logging you out in a few seconds If you really could make a lie sound true by repetition, there'd be no need for all the other techniques of persuasion.

The 'illusion of truth' can be a dangerous weapon in the hands of a propagandist like Joseph Goebbels Credit: Getty Images. One obstacle is what you already know. Even if a lie sounds plausible, why would you set what you know aside just because you heard the lie repeatedly?

Recently, a team led by Lisa Fazio of Vanderbilt University set out to test how the illusion of truth effect interacts with our prior knowledge. Would it affect our existing knowledge? They used paired true and un-true statements, but also split their items according to how likely participants were to know the truth so "The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth" is an example of a "known" items, which also happens to be true, and "The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth" is an un-true item, for which people are likely to know the actual truth.

To cover all bases, the researchers performed one study in which the participants were asked to rate how true each statement seemed on a six-point scale, and one where they just categorised each fact as "true" or "false".

Repetition pushed the average item up the six-point scale, and increased the odds that a statement would be categorised as true. For statements that were actually fact or fiction, known or unknown, repetition made them all seem more believable. Repetition can even make known lies sound more believable Credit: Alamy. At first this looks like bad news for human rationality, but — and I can't emphasise this strongly enough — when interpreting psychological science, you have to look at the actual numbers.

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This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. Sources : Mein Kampf , vol. I, ch. Stack Exchange.

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