Trump And The Illusory Truth Effect

Remember that Billy Bush op-ed, as an aside?

I was just going back over this newsletter from Stowe Boyd:

The Illusion of Truth

In there, he goes over the definition of “the illusory truth effect,” I.e.:

Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as the repetition-based truth effect or, in short, the illusory truth effect. Information we hear again and again acquires a “stickiness” that affects our judgment, and the effects are neither fleeting nor shallow. The illusory truth effect is in fact extremely robust, and its power has been shown repeatedly across a range of domains, from political speeches to product claims. One unsettling finding is that people fall prey to the effect not only when the original information is still…