EOTO #2 Reaction

The presentations were really interesting, and put names to a lot of concepts that I was only vaguely familiar with before hand. As for the ones that stood out to me, the illusory truth effect was really interesting. 

The illusory truth effect is the tendency for people to believe statements that are repeated as true. The mind associates the repetition with truth, and this effect can even trick people who knew the information was false initially. This happens often with trends and is easily seen in current social media fads. The repetition also makes the information easier to process and understand, which leads people to believe they are reasoning through it.

This article provides a simple example of the illusory truth effect, stating that 48% of the survey sample from Britain, and 46% of the survey sample from Netherlands, believed that people only use 10% of their brains. This belief is very pervasive, and was largely accepted as truth up until a few years ago.

Another interesting concept that was presented was the Overton window. Putting a name to political/ideological shift allows it to be viewed much more simply. The Overton window is the range of concepts and/or ideas that people are willing to accept. It has to do with what legislation could or should be passed at the time, and why certain issues become more or less prevalent. 

An example of what was within the Overton window over 200 years ago was slavery, another, more recent, example would be same-sex marriage, which has gained a lot more support in the past 20 years.

Overall, the concepts presented were very interesting, and far more obscure than the communication technologies from the initial EOTO. For my own presentation, on false, flags, it was interesting to know that the idea of engineering an excuse to attack or defame a rival had a name and was an intentionally used tactic.