Cognitive Psychologists have concluded from their tests that sentences heard before, no matter the truthfulness or context, are highly likely to be remembered as "true" because they "strike a cord" or "ring a bell". Familiarity, they concluded, increases credibility.
The feeling of "how easy it is to remember something" has more of an impact on our beliefs, than do the details and facts behind those the messages we hear.
Therefore, having full knowledge of the impact of improper associations, deliberate use of fallacies of argumentation to generate false impressions, notions, or preconceptions of a person public or private should be considered unlawful and subject to libel or slander litigation.
| AUTHOR | STUDY | PUBLICATION |
|---|---|---|
| Oliphant, 1983 | Repetition and recency effects in word recognition | Australian Journal of Psychology, 35, 393-403 |
| Graf, P., Mandler, G., & Haden, P.E., (1982) | Stimulating amnesic symptoms in normals. | Science, 218, 1243-1244 |
| Richardson-Klavehn, A., & Bjork, R. A. (1988) | Measures of Memory | Annual Review of Psychology, 39, 475-543 |
| Schacter, D. (1987) | Implicit Memory: History and Current Status | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 13, 501-518 |
| Jacoby, L. L., Kelley, C. M., Brown J., & Jasechko, J. , (1989) | Becoming famous overnight: limits on the ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past. | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 326-338 |
| jacoby, L. L., & Dallas, M. (1981) | On the relationship between autobiographical memory and perceptual learning. | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 3, 306-340 |
| Tulving, E., Schacter, D., & Stark, H., (1982) | Priming effects in word fragment completion are independent of recognition memory. | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 8, 336-342 |
| Begg, I., Armour, V., & Kerr, T., (1985) | On believing what we remember. | Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 17, 199-214. |
| Brown, A. S., & Halliday, H. E., (1990) | Multiple Choice tests: Pondering incorrect alternatives can be hazardous to your knowledge. | Papers presented at the meeting of the Psychonomics Society, November 1990, New Orleans. |
| Hasher, L., Goldstein, D., & Toppino, T., (1977) | Frequency and the conference of referential validity. | Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 16, 107-112. |
| Gardiner, J. & Java, R. (1991) | Forgetting in recognition memory with and without recollective experience. | Memory & Cognition, 19, 617-623 |
| Lecompte, D. (1995) | Recollective experience in the revelation effect: Separating the contributions of recollection and familiarity. | Memory & Cognition, 23, 324-334 |
| Rajaram, S. (1993) | Remembering and Knowing: Two means of access to the personal past. | Memory & Cognition, 21, 89-102 |