Is it me, or is this title actually not-super-obvious clickbait but clickbait nonetheless?
I mean, the story isn't about liars at all. It implies some sort of insight about the workings of a liar's psyche or their methods, schemes, etc. But instead it's about how repetition affects our perception of truth, and the article (as well as common knowledge) is very clear about how it doesn't matter whether this repetition comes from a singular intentional actor (a liar), or if you get the statement repeatedly from a variety of sources. It even nearly admits as much by hand-waving that of course liars have many other, stronger, methods of manipulation but we're not going to cover any those.
A more honest title would be "How repetition creates the illusion of truth".
But then nobody would click that because people would think "um yeah, cool I already know that". And they'd be right.
Tying into this, are the rather bold and hard-to-believe claims made initially by the BBC article (as opposed to the research):
"people tend to rate items they've seen before as more likely to be true, regardless of whether they are true or not"
"[the] effect worked just as strongly for known as for unknown items"
"For statements that were actually fact or fiction, known or unknown, repetition made them all seem more believable."
Only to, in the second half, completely contradict these claims:
"What Fazio and colleagues actually found, is that the biggest influence on whether a statement was judged to be true was... whether it actually was true. The repetition effect couldn’t mask the truth. With or without repetition, people were still more likely to believe the actual facts as opposed to the lies."
Wait, what? You just spent half the article boldly claiming pretty much the opposite, and then surprise! If you found the earlier claims hard to believe, it's because they weren't actually what the research found at all! You don't say!
We'll have a nice and intelligent discussion thread about it on HN, sure, it's what we do, but c'mon the article itself is garbage.
I mean, the story isn't about liars at all. It implies some sort of insight about the workings of a liar's psyche or their methods, schemes, etc. But instead it's about how repetition affects our perception of truth, and the article (as well as common knowledge) is very clear about how it doesn't matter whether this repetition comes from a singular intentional actor (a liar), or if you get the statement repeatedly from a variety of sources. It even nearly admits as much by hand-waving that of course liars have many other, stronger, methods of manipulation but we're not going to cover any those.
A more honest title would be "How repetition creates the illusion of truth".
But then nobody would click that because people would think "um yeah, cool I already know that". And they'd be right.
Tying into this, are the rather bold and hard-to-believe claims made initially by the BBC article (as opposed to the research):
"people tend to rate items they've seen before as more likely to be true, regardless of whether they are true or not"
"[the] effect worked just as strongly for known as for unknown items"
"For statements that were actually fact or fiction, known or unknown, repetition made them all seem more believable."
Only to, in the second half, completely contradict these claims:
"What Fazio and colleagues actually found, is that the biggest influence on whether a statement was judged to be true was... whether it actually was true. The repetition effect couldn’t mask the truth. With or without repetition, people were still more likely to believe the actual facts as opposed to the lies."
Wait, what? You just spent half the article boldly claiming pretty much the opposite, and then surprise! If you found the earlier claims hard to believe, it's because they weren't actually what the research found at all! You don't say!
We'll have a nice and intelligent discussion thread about it on HN, sure, it's what we do, but c'mon the article itself is garbage.