Nice thread (look forward to reading the paper). It captures a recurring theme in the social psych of "people are idiots and fools" (and debunks one particular case):
1. Design a study to exploit something that people normally do for good reasons, but corrupt the reasons, so that
2. People look like idiots and fools
3. Then trumpet to the world how idiotic and foolish people are. "Hey, I just pubished a peer reviewed study! p<.05! You don't believe people are fools? Are you some sort of science denier?"
Same problem occurs in some of:
stereotype (in?)accuracy, stereotype biases, implicit "bias," attribution "errors," heuristics, confirmation bias, expectancy biases, context effects, conformity and more.
New WP!
The illusory truth effect (repetition -> belief) is core to psych of beliefs, & thought to be a deep bias impacting misinfo, persuasion & advertising
Why would cognition include such a flaw? We argue it is a rational adaptation to high-quality info environments 🧵1/