The Rhyme-As-Reason Effect

Drake Bennett on “cognitive fluency”:

Matthew McGlone, a psychologist at the University of Texas, has found that auditory cues can shape people’s perception of truth. McGlone did a study in which he presented subjects with a series of unfamiliar aphorisms either in rhyming or nonrhyming form: “Woes unite foes,” for example, versus “Woes unite enemies.” He found that people tended to see the rhyming ones as more accurate than the nonrhyming ones, despite the fact that, substantively, the two were identical.

(via Give Me Something To Read)

Oh, fun! Let me try:

Fallacy: People only liked E.T. because he ate Reese’s Pieces. If he was into eating poop, it’d be a totally different story.

Truth: E.T. had our sympathy because he liked our Reese’s Pieces. Things would happen differently if he liked to eat our feces.

I’m convinced.