The "Truth Effect"

Professors at The Wharton School look at the James Frey case and discuss the question of deception in advertising. An excerpt:

Bolton cites what researchers call the "truth effect" -- a tendency for people to believe in the truth of claims if those claims are repeated. There are two explanations for why the effect occurs. First, repeating a claim makes it seem more familiar and people mistake familiarity for truth. The idea is that we tend to think that things we know are truths, not lies, so if something seems familiar then it must be true. Second, people misattribute repeated claims to different sources, and then tend to believe something more if multiple sources endorse the claim.

"It turns out that it is very difficult to de-bias the truth effect," Bolton says. "For example, the more you tell people that a claim is false, the more they believe it is false if you 'test' them right away. But warning people can backfire over time because they can later forget that they were told the statement was false -- and then it seems familiar and they are more likely to think it's true."

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