The Hazards of Trying to Set the Record Straight

The political campaign season inevitably brings a rash of candidate claims and counterclaims, charges and rebuttals, the presentation of "myths" v. "realities."  Conventional wisdom suggests that a smart candidate will leave no misleading claim by his or her opponent unrebutted.

But emerging evidence suggests that that strategy bears the risk of simply reinforcing the initial "false" claim in onlookers' minds.  Cognitive psychology research finds that repeatedly exposing listeners to claims like "aspirin destroys tooth enamel" increases the perceived truth of those claims -- even when the statements are explicitly identified as false at the start. 

For example, a study in the consumer context -- How Warnings about False Claims Become Recommendations -- focused on older adults and found that repeatedly identifying a claim as false helped folks remember it as inaccurate in the short term, but led them later to recall it as true.  In other words, repeating the claim in order to rebut it contributed to  listeners' greater familiarity with -- and  better memory of -- the original inaccurate claim itself rather than the more complex rebuttal context in which the claim was repeated.   The authors concluded that "The more older adults were told that a given claim was false, the more likely they were to accept it as true" after several days had passed.

So what's a beleaguered pol to do?  Not fight back, and leave your opponent's misleading claims unrebutted?  Or try to set the record straight, and bear the risk that you're just reinforcing the original charge?  Sometimes you just can't win for losing . . . .