{"id":3528,"date":"2026-07-18T07:35:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T07:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3528"},"modified":"2026-07-18T07:35:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T07:35:50","slug":"science-hints-at-trump-and-magas-insidious-threat-to-truth-and-it-is-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3528","title":{"rendered":"Science hints at Trump and MAGA\u2019s insidious threat to truth \u2013 and it is ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

PsyPost reports that casual disregard for reality poses a “uniquely potent threat” to public knowledge and belief.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump acts like America is filled with idiot people<\/a><\/p>\n

People are more likely to believe false information when it comes from someone who ignores the truth altogether rather than a liar \u201cwho actively tries to deceive.\u201d This is because repeating statements made by someone who is completely indifferent to facts \u201cheavily increases how truthful those statements feel\u201d to an audience.<\/p>\n

Additionally, casual Trump-style disregard for reality appears to pose a deadly threat to community knowledge. According to researchers, the divide sits between a simple \u201cliar,\u201d \u2014 someone who knows the truth and intentionally tries to mislead an audience \u2014 and a \u201cbulls\u2014\u2014er,\u201d who \u201ccommunicates with little to no regard for the truth, evidence, or established facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

A statement made by a \u201cbulls\u2014\u2014er\u201d might happen to be true, or it might be false, but the defining characteristic is the speaker\u2019s absolute indifference to reality. Because they do not actively try to hide a specific truth, people often judge them less harshly than they judge outright liars.<\/p>\n

In a 2023 study, Wake Forest University psychology professor and author John V. Petrocelli explored how untrustworthy sources influence consumer attitudes over time. Participants read an advertisement for a fictitious gluten-free pizza and then learned the advertiser was either a simple \u201cliar\u201d or \u201ca known bulls\u2014\u2014er<\/em>.\u201d Astoundingly, after a two-week delay, participants who had been \u201cwarned about the bulls\u2014\u2014er\u201d actually reported more positive attitudes toward the pizza than those warned about the liar. This, said Petrocelli, demonstrated a \u201csleeper effect,\u201d where the deceptive influence of the \u201cbulls\u2014\u2014er\u201d actually grew stronger over time. The researchers also found that people possess a higher \u201cdismissal readiness\u201d for lies, meaning they find it easier to entirely reject a known lie than a statement from the consummate liar.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the harder question \u2026 raised, and one almost nobody had tested empirically, was whether \u201cbulls\u2014\u2014 actually does more damage to what people believe, precisely because it doesn\u2019t trigger the same skepticism a known lie does,\u201d said Petrocelli.<\/p>\n

Read more Historian sounds the alarm as Trump tries to rewrite history<\/a><\/p>\n

The \u201cillusory truth effect\u201d is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to believe nonsense as true after hearing it multiple times. When the human brain encounters a repeated statement, it processes that information more easily, and people often mistake this mental ease for actual truth.<\/p>\n

But Petrocelli wanted to see if knowing the source of a claim changes this effect. \u201cIf a person knows a statement comes from a bulls\u2014\u2014er rather than a liar, they might not filter the repeated information as strictly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Study participants were given 42 different statements. Half of them factual and half completely false. And it turned out that even after study participants were told whether the source of the info was a liar or a \u201cbulls\u2014\u2014er,\u201d the exact same statements made by the \u201cbulls\u2014\u2014er,\u201d was trusted significantly more than the liar. And in two other tests the repetition of the bulls\u2014\u2014 claims successfully tricked their minds into believing the statements.<\/p>\n

\u201cA known liar\u2019s claims get flagged and rejected; a bulls\u2014\u2014er\u2019s claims, because they\u2019re not certainly false, slide by with much less resistance, and repetition alone makes them feel truer over time,\u201d Petrocelli said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything, the practical takeaway is: don\u2019t just ask \u2018is this person lying to me,\u2019 ask \u2018does this person actually know or care whether this is true,\u2019\u201d said Petrocelli.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump is a \u2018psychopath\u2019 who converses \u2018only with himself\u2019: biographer<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PsyPost reports that casual disregard for reality poses a “uniquely potent threat” to public knowledge and belief.People are more likely to believe false information when it comes from someone who ignores the truth altogether rather than a liar \u201cwho actively tries to deceive.\u201d This is because repeat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nScience hints at Trump and MAGA\u2019s insidious threat to truth \u2013 and it is ugly - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3528\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Science hints at Trump and MAGA\u2019s insidious threat to truth \u2013 and it is ugly - 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