Blog Post Nine

 EOTO Project 2: Illusory Truth Effect

    I had the honor of researching and studying the illusory truth effect. This effect has many moving parts because of the research that has been done on
repeated information and how it is often perceived as more truthful than new information.

    The illusory truth effect is when an individual repeats something enough that others surrounding that person start to believe it. The illusory truth effect then creates an echo chamber which is when you begin to surround yourself with people who believe in what you believe in so you are only affected by the illusory truth effect by the people you choose to be around. Many people take part in an echo chamber to avoid a chilling effect which is when you are surrounded by people who don’t believe in the same thing as you do so you silence yourself in fear of speaking out and disagreeing with others. 

    As I mentioned before, the illusory truth effect has many moving parts and uses other things we have learned in class that go hand in hand with the statement of the illusory truth effect. However, these other vocabulary words allow for us to understand the positives and negatives of the effect itself. The positives of the illusory truth effect are that it causes less of a chance of an altercation between those of different beliefs because those around them are the people that believe the same due to the theory of echo chambers. The negatives, however, are that it causes more people to silence themselves around those that share the repetitional beliefs due to the chilling effect.

    The effects of the illusory truth effect include people viewing repetition as true information rather than correct information, as I mentioned while introducing the effect. This is the main effect and the most obvious due to repetition being the main aspect of the illusory truth effect to really work. Repetition increases processing influence, hence why the illusory truth effect is so effective on others. The processing influence is a valid effect because people are more likely to process the information they here the more often they hear it. People tend to perceive claims as truer if they have been exposed to them before. A negative effect would be that not everything we believe is true, whether this is the information we have taught ourselves or what others around us believe. In saying this, if we repeat it enough to get others to believe us even if it is not true. It raises so much concern in our world on misinformation and fake news. As an example, we see this with the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Finally, some examples of effects are, as we mentioned, COVID-19. People began to believe that symptoms came from radiation on 5G cell phones because enough people talked about it and brought it to the mainstream media. Following this, political parties. People watch certain news channels that correlate with which way they lean politically to only hear the side they believe. For example, those who watch the news channel, FOX are most likely to be in the Republican Party. On the other hand, on the news channel, CNN, the people who watch most

likely side with the Democratic Party.

In conclusion, our results suggest that the more often information is repeated, the more likely it is to be believed. This becomes an issue because the information we hear could be invalid and incorrect. Even though the illusory truth effect can't be stopped, because that would be silencing those and taking away their first amendment rights, we can find comfort in those who surround themselves with others that believe the same in hopes for less altercations.