Product Range Distribution: What is Truth?

In response to feedback given during my pitch of research I've explore what is truth and what makes things true to compare to my research based on fake news. According to the Oxford dictionary the definition of truth is that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. Furthermore the definition for true is, in accordance with fact or reality or what is real or actual. 

What makes statements appear true?
Repetition of certain statements often makes them appear true as we are used to hearing them, this is called the illusory truth effect e.g; carrots improve your eyesight, we only use 10% of our brain are all statements we believe but are actually untrue. This is because the positive feeling that's experienced when we hear information that we know is true is very similar to the feeling we get when we have heard information before, resulting in repetition often being confused with validity. The Illusory Truth Effect was first introduced in 1977 in a research paper by Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino and now plays a significant role in multiple fields. The concept of illusory truth effect is particularly interesting in terms of politics as if a politician repeats themselves enough supporters and potential voters will believe what they say. 

The Availability Heuristic:

The Availability Heuristic is a mental short cut that results in an overestimation of the frequency of an event based on how available or vidi the event is in out memory, e.g; which job is more dangerous a police officer or fisherman. The answer a fisherman as they are more likely to be killed at work than police officers, however due to the attention and news coverage police offers get when they are killed this event sticks with us making us believe they are more common. 

Emotional Reasoning:

Emotional reasoning occurs when we allow are emotions to justify or defended a conclusion we've drawn about a certain topic. We'd like to think our decisions are driven by reasoning and logic but sometimes our emotions can drive our conclusions and beliefs without us realising. This tends to affect our believe about emotionally charged subjects such as sexuality,, politics, money, crime or war. Furthermore if we feel scared or anxious by a topic we can often jump to conclusions that that topic in objectively bad or dangerous. 

Confirmation Bias: 

The confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that supports what we already believe. This comes in two forms, we tend to surround ourselves by information that supports are preexisting opinions about a topic and then ignore or discount any other information that doesn't support what we already believe.