The Cognitive Bias That Makes Us Believe Advertising and Propaganda

How to make an idea persuasive? Back it up with facts. And if they are not? Then it’s enough just to have 2 million Instagram followers ready to repeat your words. A recent example is the deplorable story of actor Woody Harrelson, who reposted a fake article about the connection between the spread of the CORONAVIRUS and “5G radiation.” There was, of course, no evidence that high-speed mobile internet was spreading the virus. But the posts of Harrelson and other celebrities turned out to be very viral, judging by the videos of the destruction of cell towers by vandals. Why? Because evidence is not needed when the cascade of available information comes into play.

The cascade of available information can be described in one sentence: if many people repeat an opinion often, it begins to seem true to us. This phenomenon was first studied in 1999 by economist Timur Kuran and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. They likened it to a cumulative chain reaction that turns information into a collective belief as it spreads. It is clear how the repetition mechanism works when it comes to simple memorization and recognition. A textbook example: if you constantly show a person on TV, he will become famous regardless of his abilities and talents. But how can the reproduction of information turn any fiction into truth? Why do we take words for fact and their repetition as evidence? There are two main reasons. And both are connected with our sociality.