The Illusory Truth Effect and Projectionism
“Illusory Truth Effect” is the propensity to believe false information or untruths to be correct after repetitious exposure to that specific information. It is somewhat akin to the “Big Lie” credited, substantially, to Nazi chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
When I googled “illusory truth effect and climate change”, the AI response resulted in,” The illusory truth effect, where people believe information to be true due to its repetition, has significant implications for climate change discourse. Research suggests that repeated exposure to climate-skeptical claims can increase belief in these claims, even among individuals who endorse climate science. This phenomenon can contribute to the spread of misinformation and undermine public understanding of climate change”.
That’s what we call projectionism. The act of projection or projectivism is when one individual or group projects or assigns a characteristic, attitude, or reasoning that they perform onto others. Usually, the “others” are a politically adversarial group, and the content or activity within the projection is considered negative.
In the linked Guardian article, the “illusory truth effect” is called insidious repetition, and it is blamed on the reiteration of “skeptical claims about climate science”, in other words any assertion that anthropogenic climate change is false. These findings are the conclusion of a research study released by the Australian National University, situated in Canberra the nation’s capital city. Canberra is located approximately 150 miles southwest of Sydney.
I link the study relative to the article labeled, “Repetition increases belief in climate-skeptical claims, even for climate science endorsers” here. The lead author of the study, Mary Jiang says, “The findings show how powerful and insidious repetition is and how it can influence people’s assessment of truth.”
This is pure political projectionism. What makes the conclusion of the study seem so improbable, for anyone whether, a believer, a refuter, a skeptic or dreamer, is that articles in support of manmade climate change so vastly outnumber research, articles, data and studies denouncing the climate change hypothesis are actually difficult to find.
In the article, those supportive of climate change state, “The cognitive science is pretty clear that repetition is a very powerful tool because of how we process information. The more we hear something, from multiple sources, including those we trust, the smoother it becomes to process, the more accepted it is as ‘just known’.” They also understand that the “illusory truth effect” and “insidious repetition” has been their best friend and ally ever since James Hansen provided his fully-fabricated and fictitious testimony to the US Senate in June of 1988.
The study concludes with, “Do not repeat false information. Instead, repeat what is true and enhance its familiarity.”
Note the word “enhance”. This reminds me of a quote by the late Dr. Stephen Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University and a lead author with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who once quipped, “We need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”