Misinform, Rinse, Repeat: An Effective Talk-Radio Tactic

It’s become clear that both sides of the U.S. political aisle use psychological concepts and research in their talking points. In our most recent post, we highlighted the benefits of incorporating a psychological perspective in political podcasts and opinion pieces, especially those that address strife and division. Unfortunately, psychological research can be applied in harmful ways as well.

Dan Bongino’s Psychology Background

Dan Bongino has become an increasingly central figure in right-wing media. A former U.S. Secret Service agent, Bongino has a hugely popular Facebook page, podcast, and Fox News show. Bongino also took over Rush Limbaugh’s radio time slot in May 2021, further expanding his extensive media reach. As of last month, subscribers to his podcast numbered more than 2 million, and more than 8.5 million people listen to his radio show each week.

The rise of a previously unknown media personality isn’t so surprising these days, but we were surprised to learn that Bongino has a psychology background. He earned both B.S. and M.S. degrees in psychology from Queens College “with a concentration in neuropsychology and behavioral learning.” It is unclear whether Bongino purposively and explicitly uses his psychology training in his work; however, whether he knows it or not, he is using an effective technique: repetition (as so many radio and podcast hosts do).

Repetition and the Illusory Truth Effect

Bongino is really good at repeating himself. That’s important because it turns out that repetition is one of the main culprits in making people believe misinformation. Many, many experiments have demonstrated that repeated information is rated as being more true than information heard for the first time (Fazio et al., 2015).

Psychologist Lisa Fazio and her colleagues demonstrated that this illusory truth effect is enhanced with repetition. Fazio’s research team randomly assigned participants to read fake “facts” that were either new (stated once) or repeated; the fake “facts” were about topics that were both known and unknown to the participant. For example, “the Minotaur is the legendary one-eyed giant in Greek mythology” is a fake “fact” about which participants tended to have knowledge, realizing that it’s actually the Cyclops being described. One fake “fact” that is typically unknown is that “Billy the Kid’s last name is Garrett.” Most of us wouldn’t know that his last name was actually Bonney.

Participants then rated the truth of each of these statements on a scale from 1 (definitely false) to 6 (definitely true). Repeated statements, even about known fake facts, received higher average truth ratings. As the researchers explain, “Reading a statement like ‘A sari is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by Scots’ increased participants’ later belief that it was true, even if they could correctly answer the question, ‘What is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by Scots?’”

It’s a terrible trick of the human brain that repetition can have this negative effect, and it’s part of what has led to political divisiveness in the United States. Why does this happen? The researchers blame knowledge neglect, the failure to use our own store of facts when confronted with something that just seems true because of repetition. The reason people often don’t do that may simply be the cognitive effort required to recall and apply our knowledge in the moment—it's cognitively expensive, as the authors describe it.

The researchers also point out that the phenomenon of knowledge neglect is fairly widespread, citing the Moses illusion in which people are asked, “How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?” Most people unthinkingly answer “two,” even though they probably know that story was actually about Noah, not Moses.

Repetition and the Media

Let’s circle back to Bongino and his ability to repeat himself. In an interview with Slate, New Yorker writer Evan Osnos pointed out that “[Bongino’s] show’s repetitive nature is actually part of its appeal," citing research that suggests listeners will tune out if there’s too much variety. (Listeners of Top 40 stations likely recognize the repetition that drives playlists.) Osnos points out that repetition has increased in talk radio "to the point that now you hear people repeat the same messages over and over again. But when those are political messages, that has the effect of actually altering people’s perceptions, because one of the things we know—every dictator and cheerleader figures this out early on—is that repetition has this really powerful cognitive impact. It makes you begin to see things as more important, as larger, as dominant.” Osnos is describing the illusory truth effect. And he sees this phenomenon as central to Bongino’s popularity. Repetition, Osnos says, “is the core of [Bongino’s] product.”

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Bongino is sometimes careful to avoid outright misinformation, but with respect to the pandemic, he’s been less careful, and was recently permanently banned from YouTube for repeatedly posting coronavirus misinformation, including the fake fact that masks are useless. So it was repetition that actually got Bongino booted from YouTube, but he retains access to numerous other platforms.

There's little we can do to stop the seemingly ceaseless repetition of misinformation, but Fazio and her colleagues give us a ray of hope against our very-human tendency to believe things that have been repeated. (In fact, we’re repeating ourselves here in an attempt to make a point about the power of repetition. We've written about repetition several times for Misinformation Desk. Do you believe us yet?)

Certain contexts, Fazio and her colleagues explain, such as when people are asked to fact-check, can spur us to exert the cognitive effort to apply our existing knowledge. It may be too much to ask, but social media and other media platforms might prime us to listen and read through a fact-checking lens. In a previous post, we wrote about behavioral nudges such as this, including a plan by Twitter to nudge people to actually read an article before retweeting. It may be cognitively inexpensive to simply believe repeated untruths, but short-term savings can have long-term consequences.