Propagandists intuited the illusory truth effect long before psychologists verified it.
Evidence
It’s worth thinking about the implications of this. ‘Mass immigration is hopelessly out of control.’ ‘Women don’t have the ambition to get to the top.’ ‘Global warming is a hoax.’ Rinse, repeat. Does repeating a lie really make it seem more true? Perhaps unsurprisingly, propaganda experts intuited this insight long before psychologists had experimentally verified it. In fact, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s infamous minister of propaganda, is often associated with writings on the ‘Big Lie’ rule: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’ — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 66
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the persuasion/lies literature and historical propaganda techniques. — connects to: Correct prior knowledge does not shield people from the illusory truth effect — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 68; Education lowers fake-news belief but not susceptibility to illusory truth — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 72; Repeated false accusation can generate belief through sheer illocutionary force — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1466
Broader Connections
- Correct prior knowledge does not shield people from the illusory truth effect
#corroborates(0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 68 - Education lowers fake-news belief but not susceptibility to illusory truth
#corroborates(0.80) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 72 - Repeated false accusation can generate belief through sheer illocutionary force
#corroborates(0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1466