shortcuts

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Your brain lies to you: How do we know what “we know”?

The phenomenon is know as source amnesia. Repeat something often enough, over and over or with enough emotional impact, and it can lead people to forget whether a statement is true or a lie. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.

“With time, this misremembering gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.”

Read the International Herald Tribune article…

Perhaps this is why 10% of Americans think Obama is a muslim, even with the noisy row with his christian minister.
Or why 18% percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth.