In the Information War Release Early and Often
September 6th, 2007The confirmation bias, where we are more likely to believe something if we’ve seen or heard it often, is extremely powerful. New research discussed at Mind Hacks is showing that the confirmation bias is so strong that retracting false information actually makes people believe it more strongly.
The article discusses a government flier that attempts to debunk flu myths by marking them true or false, but instead only reinforced false beliefs, and information about the Iraq war that was retracted the next day but still strongly believed. The tactic of releasing early and often is used by all groups in a conflict, such as 9-11 conspiracy theorists and the U.S. government.
The implications of this behavior are really astounding.
The more we see or hear something, the more we believe it to be true
Consider how many different ways this trait plays out:
Branding
The more we see a brand, either through advertisements or through use, the more we think it is a good deal. If many other people have made a decision, we trust that decision as the right one. This can be good, as in the case of quality tools and equipment, or it can be bad, in the case of brand name shoes that are of the same quality as less well-known shoes.
Companies capitalize on this also. The Motorola RAZR
Politicians
The more ads we see, the more credibility we are likely to give. Of course, we are also adverse to those ads, but typically only to candidates who are not from our party.
Perpetuation of Beliefs
Beliefs about a wide variety of things in the natural world or in society are extremely hard to stamp out, even if they’ve been widely disproven. This isn’t just for urban legends, it’s also for physics before relativity, geology before plate tectonics, and all other knowledge revolutions. Tomas Kuhn has a great book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
In the absence of irrefutable proof, prevalence appears to matter more than the strength of the idea. There are still people who believe that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around the earth.
Decision making in the context of the confirmation bias is very difficult, as our confirmation biases tend to come through as intuitive gut feelings, much like automatic associations. The obvious strategy suggested by the confirmation bias is to flood the environment with your message. Competition between these different memes is an interesting subject.
-zot
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