Blog Post #10

 EOTO Terms and Concepts Presentations

The presentations done by my classmates were all very interesting and insightful. While listening, the two that stuck out the most to me were the illusory truth effect and the spiral of silence.

The illusory truth effect is the tendency for people to believe false information after it is repeated multiple times. What was especially interesting to me about this effect is how the presenter was able to pull in the connection to human nature. Since repetition and consistency both hugely impact human thought, and we as humans are naturally predisposed to question new information, it makes perfect sense why this happens. This experiment conducted by Science Direct explains the dangers of the illusory truth effect spreading misinformation.

This experiment, along with the presentation led me to thinking about real-world examples of this. What is also dangerous about the illusory truth effect is that the loudest person in the room will most likely be listened to more than someone with substantive information. This can can an issue because by having social media algorithms giving media consumers posts that sell the most, those in politics who could have good ideas are flushed out by those who are the loudest. This can then lead to people believing whatever these people are saying since they are seeing it over and over again.

In addition to the illusory truth effect, the spiral of silence was a theory that sparked my interest the most. The story told was that there was an emperor who said he was wearing clothes that only smart people could see. In reality, he was wearing nothing but no one dared say otherwise out of fear of being judged and feeling less than. The spiral of silence theory states that people will remain silent when they believe their views go against the majority out of fear of isolation. This also relates to the human nature of the need to be accepted. Additionally, this article by Thomas Petersen explained how the fear of isolation is usually unconscious and yet causes people to constantly monitor what they are saying.

By having a society that is hesitant to speak up about opposing beliefs, we are living in a dangerous time. While this is not a new concept as shown by the emperor's story, cancel culture has escalated these effects exponentially. The spiral of silence will enable the majority opinion to become stronger and stronger and leave the minority opinion weaker and result in difficulty to be heard in the future.

Both of these topics also gave me an opportunity to reflect on the impact they have had on myself. I have had time to look back and consider times that I stayed quiet or altered what I thought in order to make others comfortable around me rather than speaking my mind. Also, I wonder what I consider ‘fact’ that instead has just been told to me enough times that now I believe it to be true. It is important for everyone to take time and reflect on how they have been impacted by these effects and learn how to mitigate the impacts moving forward.