We live in a world where the facts matter, and should matter. If you repeat things without bothering to check if they are true, you are helping to make a world where lies and truth are easier to confuse. So, please, think before you repeat. If you have an everyday psychological phenomenon you'd like to see written about in these columns please get in touch with tomstafford on Twitter, or ideas idiolect.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. Neurohacks Psychology. Share using Email. By Tom Stafford 26th October Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not. Understanding this effect can help you avoid falling for propaganda, says psychologist Tom Stafford.
This shows something fundamental about how we update our beliefs — repetition has a power to make things sound more true, even when we know differently, but it doesn't over-ride that knowledge The next question has to be, why might that be?
Around the BBC. Or as Gehlbach puts it, "You don't want to be the only person standing on Red Square holding a placard the says 'Down with Putin.
Government lies, Little finds, circulate especially well in conditions where there's strong social pressure to fall in line. Little's model might not apply to the United States as a whole, but it does help to explain the way information and beliefs circulate in communities within the country. In party politics there's a strong desire for consensus and also often a penalty for being the one person to raise your hand and challenge something that's not quite true.
That's how, for example, one person floats the idea that the president was not born in the United States, a small group of people believes the idea, and the credulous among them start to feel reluctant to correct something they know is not true. Kevin Hartnett is a writer in South Carolina. See All Quotes.
Logging out…. Logging out You've been inactive for a while, logging you out in a few seconds It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous. Joseph Goebbels.
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