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Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Sep 04, 2007 07:16pm |
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| Category | Study |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Wednesday, September 5, 2007 01:15:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description |
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 4, 2007; Page A03
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."
When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.
Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.
The psychological insights yielded by the research, which has been confirmed in a number of peer-reviewed laboratory experiments, have broad implications for public policy. The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths. |
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