'Sleeper effect' accounts for durability of weak messages from credible sources
Tuesday, September 13, 2016 - 12:41
in Psychology & Sociology
You don't need a Ph.D. in rhetoric to know that messages from a weak source - a P.T. Barnum-esque carnival barker, for example - typically don't hold much water. But according to new research co-written by a University of Illinois expert in social psychology, even the most spurious of arguments can still reverberate in the public consciousness over time, provided they are delivered by a credible source.