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I came across something interesting when I was doing some reading about implicit memory for a project.
There was an article I found which focused on how this effect could be a big problem with the elderly. Apparently, repeated warnings that a claim is false can sometimes only serve to make that thing seem "familiar" causing a sense of trust in the exact thing that should be avoided!
http://www.acrwebsite.org/topic.asp?artid=250
Something to think about when you are reminding great-grandpa that those magnetic bracelets aren't going to help his rheumatism.
The illusion-of-truth effect states that a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than a new one. In a 1977 study, testers read subjects 60 plausible sentences every two weeks and asked them to rate the validity of the sentence. Unbeknownst to the subjects, the testers strategically repeated a few of these sentences, both true ones and false ones, from session to session. The results showed that the subjects were more likely to rate as true the sentences that they had previously heard. As priming, the illusion-of-truth effect occurred just as much for sentences that the subjects had no conscious recollection of having previously heard (Hasher, Goldstein, & Toppino, 1977). Because this illusion-of-truth effect occurs even without explicit knowledge, it is a direct result of implicit memory. Amazingly, subjects tend to rate these previously heard sentences as more true even when the person initially giving the sentences states that they are false (Begg, Anas, & Farinacci, 1992). The illusion-of-truth effect in some ways shows the dangers of implicit memory because it can lead to individuals’ making decisions on a statement’s veracity without conscious knowledge of why they act.
There was an article I found which focused on how this effect could be a big problem with the elderly. Apparently, repeated warnings that a claim is false can sometimes only serve to make that thing seem "familiar" causing a sense of trust in the exact thing that should be avoided!
http://www.acrwebsite.org/topic.asp?artid=250
Something to think about when you are reminding great-grandpa that those magnetic bracelets aren't going to help his rheumatism.