{"id":75200,"date":"2018-11-15T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T14:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=75200"},"modified":"2018-11-15T18:14:56","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T23:14:56","slug":"the-cut-lie-about-yourself-enough-and-even-youll-believe-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=75200","title":{"rendered":"(The Cut) Lie About Yourself Enough and Even You\u2019ll Believe It"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a recent,\u00a0truly excellent episode<\/a>\u00a0of the podcast\u00a0Heavyweight<\/em>, host Jonathan Goldstein attempted to solve a mysterious memory belonging to his friend Rob (Corddry, a comedian). Rob believed that, as a child, he broke his arm at camp. Rob\u2019s family \u2014 his mother, father, sister, and brother \u2014 have no recollection of such an injury. At all. In fact, they vehemently deny it, insisting that the only Corddry sibling to suffer a broken arm was Rob\u2019s older brother. Rob is certain, but so is his family. So who\u2019s right? I won\u2019t spoil it for you (it\u2019s really a must-listen), but facts aside, there is another big question at hand: can a person come to believe their own often-repeated mythology, even when it\u2019s patently untrue?<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0a study<\/a>\u00a0published in the journal of\u00a0Applied Cognitive Psychology\u00a0<\/em>last week, the answer is a resounding, discomfiting\u00a0yes.\u00a0<\/em>In an experiment, the study\u2019s author, Danielle Polage, an associate professor of psychology at Central Washington University, provided her college student subjects with a list of events they may have experienced in childhood, asking them to rate them on their certainty that those events did (or did not) happen. Then, pretending not to know which of those items were untrue, Polage asked the subjects to read a scripted biography made up of half true and half untrue events, but to act as though all the events were true. The subjects were told that the experiment was meant to test their ability to lie, and were thus directed to add feasible color and detail to the false events to create a fuller story.<\/p>\n

After they finished lying to her, Polage asked the students to again rate their certainty that each of these events had or had not happened. Fascinatingly (and a little creepily), subjects showed a statistically significant change in their beliefs, indicating that they became less sure that untrue events hadn\u2019t happened to them after saying that they had. Conversely, when subjects were later asked to deny events that\u00a0had\u00a0<\/em>happened to them, they became less sure that those events did take place.<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Can a person come to believe their own often-repeated mythology, even when it\u2019s patently untrue? https:\/\/t.co\/86ZuqrsGlS<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Science of Us (@thescienceofus) November 15, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n