The research shows that simply seeing an image multiple times, even if it is entirely fabricated, increases its perceived credibility. This highlights a novel psychological mechanism by which misinformation can spread through social media and other digital platforms.

“The study is based on a well-known psychological phenomenon called the ‘mere exposure effect,’” said research leader Guy Grinfield, who is completing his doctorate at the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University’s Gershon H. Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences. “The mere exposure effect is a well-established phenomenon in which people tend to develop a preference for things simply because they are familiar with them. In other words, repeated exposure to a stimulus makes people more likely to perceive it positively or consider it true, even if they have no other evidence.”

“We sought to examine whether this effect also applies in the visual domain—specifically with images created using artificial intelligence algorithms. This is the first study to demonstrate the mere exposure effect for images; until now, it had only been demonstrated for text.”