Sleeper effect

What it is

A message from a low-credibility source gradually becomes more persuasive as people forget where it came from while remembering the message.

Related

• Appeal to authority fallacy
  A claim first discounted for its low-credibility source regains credibility once we forget who said it, the reverse of how authority works.
• Halo effect bias
  Source credibility colors a message at first; as the source fades, only the message's own appeal is left.
• Illusory truth effect bias
  As we forget where a message came from, we remember it as familiar and credible.

Appears in

• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly#70: Sleeper effect

References

• Wikipedia: Sleeper effect en.wikipedia.org
• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: List of cognitive biases en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: Cognitive bias codex en.wikipedia.org

More in “Deciding and acting: incentives, loss and commitment”