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Illusory truth effect

The tendency to judge a repeated statement as more credible because it feels familiar.

Published 04 August 2026Updated 04 August 2026

The illusory truth effect occurs when repetition increases processing fluency and that ease is mistaken for evidence of truth. Treat repeated exposure as one claim seen many times, then verify it against independent and reliable sources.

Sources

Debiasing Decisions: Improved Decision Making With a Single Training Intervention

Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences / 2015 / Paper

Longitudinal experiments testing video and game-based debiasing interventions.