Communal reinforcement

From Wikinfo

Communal reinforcement is a social phenomenon in which a concept or idea is repeatedly asserted very frequently in a community, that its existence is reinforced to become a strong belief in many people's minds; regardless of whether sufficient empirical evidence has been presented to support it, or more critically, its actual ground in reality. Over the years such ideas may simply be regarded as facts, and be further reinforced by publications in the mass media, books, etc. despite their lack of any significant scientific basis.

Concepts that are communally reinforced by their nature:

• Urban legends
• Myths
• Rumors (regardless of them being true or not)
• Cults

Other concepts seen by many to primarily originate from communal reinforcement:

• Ghosts
• UFOs
• Alien abductions
• Hypnosis
• Race (human classification to subspecies according to morphological features)
• God

See also: Appeal to belief, Confirmation bias , meme

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Communal_reinforcement" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_reinforcement, used under the GNU Free Documentation License