The Persistence of Falsehoods
Oct. 3rd, 2007 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThere's a fascinating study suggesting that corrections of a falsehood can actually make more people think it is true.
What intrigues me about this is that it's a mundane example of a well-known magical law: spellcasters are advised to avoid negatives in phrasing their incantations, because the universe tends to "miss" them and thus deliver the opposite effect. If you say "I want no more money problems," the universe may hear "I want -- more money problems." And sure enough, the mundane researchers came to a similar conclusion as magical practitioners: they recommend phrasing everything in positive terms. To continue the analogy, you might say "I want sustainable money" or "I want a comfortable budget."
On a subtler note, suppose you need to undermine a troublesome organization or individual. The above pattern suggests that a highly effective method would be to use negatives: "Company X does not mistreat its employees. Company X never condones sexual harassment or racism." Make a list and repeat the points often; the negatives will largely decay after a few days, leaving people with an embedded warning that Company X is bad news. And the marvelous thing about this tactic is that it's bulletproof: you can show what you actually said as being favorable in phrasing. In fact, many organizations have a factsheet of some kind that takes this format -- official documents can thus be mined for high-negative ammunition.
What intrigues me about this is that it's a mundane example of a well-known magical law: spellcasters are advised to avoid negatives in phrasing their incantations, because the universe tends to "miss" them and thus deliver the opposite effect. If you say "I want no more money problems," the universe may hear "I want -- more money problems." And sure enough, the mundane researchers came to a similar conclusion as magical practitioners: they recommend phrasing everything in positive terms. To continue the analogy, you might say "I want sustainable money" or "I want a comfortable budget."
On a subtler note, suppose you need to undermine a troublesome organization or individual. The above pattern suggests that a highly effective method would be to use negatives: "Company X does not mistreat its employees. Company X never condones sexual harassment or racism." Make a list and repeat the points often; the negatives will largely decay after a few days, leaving people with an embedded warning that Company X is bad news. And the marvelous thing about this tactic is that it's bulletproof: you can show what you actually said as being favorable in phrasing. In fact, many organizations have a factsheet of some kind that takes this format -- official documents can thus be mined for high-negative ammunition.
