We’ve all heard phrases like “Eating carrots will improve your vision” or “Eating spinach will make you stronger”. The vast majority of ideas like these entered our lives through different channels such as practical information corners, advertisements and cartoons, which were first found in newspapers and on television and then moved to social media.
Since the day they entered, very few people have questioned their veracity and learned the original. The rest, on the other hand, preferred not to dwell on the wrong or incomplete information in question by thinking that “after all, everyone knows that, it is the opinion of an expert”. Let’s look at this situation, which we know as the illusory reality effect, together.
The mentioned effect was first revealed in a study conducted in 1977:
Let’s explain briefly: In this study, certain questions were given to a group of students one by one, and then They were asked how confident they were in their answers. This situation was repeated in 3 sessions. At the end of the first test, the answers were quite normal, even below expectations, and it was seen that this confidence level increased gradually between sessions.
In the questions, there were statements that were thought to be independent from each other and far from students, from the location of the first space base until the date basketball was counted as one of the Olympic sports. As a result, it was concluded that repeated mistakes made those statements more believable.
Finally, let’s say that there are people who have different thinking styles in the group to which the questions were asked. This means that even the most critical thinker can be affected.
We see this especially in the world of politics and advertising:
Propaganda, primarily in the social media, can lead to escalation in world politics. Everyday users are in danger of swimming in information pollution, both because an item becomes more popular as it is shared, and because it is easy to spread false, propaganda or incomplete information on channels such as Twitter.
As such, they mostly accept false information as it is, and it becomes a bit more difficult to show the truth. Sometimes we even see politicians around the world start this cycle of misinformation. We see the same situation in advertisements shown on television.
For example, Apple’s Watch model often appears in advertisements on the wrist of a swimmer, and naturally everyone thinks it is water resistant. For this reason, the thought of “there is no risk of deterioration even if a professional athlete uses it” settles in the minds. But few people know that Apple does not guarantee water-related deterioration.
So why are people affected by this method that even Hitler used?
Obviously, there are varying reasons for this. While roughly searching behind the information, proceeding in an intuitive way rather than cognitively, a piece (could be a word) we encountered before is close to the information we hear now and the pressure placed on you by the environment may cause this.
For example, even information that you know to be true before can unfortunately become credible when repeated in a distorted form. We can individually consider this state of intimacy that occurs when a piece of that information is presented to you.
When we expand the situation to the masses, we also see the effect of environmental pressure. “How can one person torture another community just because of their skin colour?” You may have thought and tried to make sense of it. A lot of cover has been made for this. Some said they had dark skin because black people were sinners, while others crossed the line too far, not even counting them as human.
And not 100 or 1000 people, but millions shared this idea. From thoughts such as “women cannot work” to false war news, we can observe the misleading reality effect in a wide range of areas.
So how do we protect ourselves from this situation?
We turn to media organizations and certain people to get information, and then we accept what we see there. This can be considered as taking what is said as it is. You need to confirm the accuracy of the information by consulting multiple channels instead of a single channel you trust. You can refer to the ways to verify different types of information that we have mentioned in this content.
Editorial errors may occur from time to time in the media channels we mentioned. For this reason, we need to ensure that we receive information from these channels, which we are deemed to be dependent on. Because, unfortunately, we do not know whether we are in the effect of illusory reality or not. In this case, if you want to be able to think objectively on your own, critical thinking methods will come in handy.
Does messing with the phone while charging really reduces the life of the battery? Or does taking 10 thousand steps a day prolong a person’s life? Or is bitter food really beneficial for health?
Stock answers you can give to these are already in your mind. When asked, most people will answer, “If I mess with the phone while it’s on the charger, the battery will run out fast” or “bitter food will heal quickly”. But when it comes to the background of these sentences, few people have the argument to defend them.
While everyone is thinking in this direction, investigating the details does not seem important to most people. At this point, what you need to do as an individual is, of course, not to put your work aside and drown yourself in scientific articles to try to learn everything. To sharpen your abilities such as reasoning, analysis and evaluation, it will be sufficient for you to search for ways to think critically.
Research a lot as a result
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4
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