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Did it help? Did it heck. Rather than quelling the rumour, they had only poured fuel on its flames. Within weeks, the CDC was hearing from so many distressed callers it had to set up a banana hotline. The facts became so distorted that people eventually started to quote the CDC as the source of the rumour. Even today, new variants of the myth have occasionally reignited those old fears.

"The banana apocalypse may seem comical in hindsight, but the same cracks in our rational thinking can have serious, even dangerous, consequences."

We may laugh at these far-fetched urban myths – as ridiculous as the ongoing theory that Paul McCartney, Miley Cyrus and Megan Fox have all been killed and replaced with lookalikes. But the same cracks in our logic allow the propagation of far more dangerous ideas, such as the belief that HIV is harmless and vitamin supplements can cure AIDS, that 9/11 was an ‘inside job’ by the US government, or that a tinfoil hat will stop the FBI from reading your thoughts.

Why do so many false beliefs persist in the face of hard evidence? And why do attempts to deny them only add grist to the rumour mill? It's not a question of intelligence – even Nobel Prize winners have fallen for some bizarre and baseless theories. But a series of recent psychological advances may offer some answers, showing how easy it is to construct a rumour that bypasses the brain’s deception filters.

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Known as the “Moses illusion”, this absentmindedness illustrates just how easily we miss the details of a statement, favouring the general gist in place of the specifics. Instead, we normally just judge whether it “feels” right or wrong before accepting or rejecting its message. “Even when we ‘know’ we should be drawing on facts and evidence, we just draw on feelings,” says Eryn Newman at the University of Southern California, whose forthcoming paper summarises the latest research on misinformation.

Based on the research to date, Newman suggests our gut reactions swivel around just five simple questions:

*Does a fact come from a credible source?

*Do others believe it?

*Is there plenty of evidence to support it?

*Is it compatible with what I believe?

*Does it tell a good story?

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Sticky nuggets

Then there’s the “cognitive fluency” of a statement – essentially, whether it tells a good, coherent story that is simple to imagine. “If something feels smooth and easy to process, then our default is to expect things to be true,” says Newman. This is particularly true if a myth easily fits with our expectations. “It has to be sticky – a nugget or soundbite that links to what you know, and reaffirms your beliefs,” agrees Stephan Lewandowsky at the University of Bristol in the UK, whose work has examined the psychology of climate change deniers.

A slick presentation will instantly boost the cognitive fluency of a claim, while raising its believability. In one recent study, Newman presented participants with an article (falsely) saying that a well-known rock singer was dead. The subjects were more likely to believe the claim if the article was presented next to a picture of him, simply because it became easier to bring the singer to mind – boosting the cognitive fluency of the statement. Similarly, writing in an easy-to-read font, or speaking with good enunciation, have been shown to increase cognitive fluency; indeed, Newman has shown that something as seemingly inconsequential as the sound of someone’s name can sway us; the easier it is to pronounce, the more likely we are to accept their judgement.

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Fraying beliefs

As a result of these frailties, we are instantly drawn to the juicier details of a story – the original myth – while forgetting the piddling little fact that it’s been proven false. Worse still, by repeating the original myth, the correction will have increased the familiarity of the claim – and as we’ve seen, familiarity breeds believability. Rather than uprooting the myth, the well-intentioned correction has only pushed it deeper.

A debunked myth may also leave an uncomfortable gap in the mind. Lewandowsky explains that our beliefs are embedded in our “mental models” of the way the world works; each idea is interlinked with our other views. It’s a little like a tightly bound book: once you tear out one page, the others may begin to fray as well. “You end up with a black hole in your mental representation, and people don’t like it.” To avoid that discomfort, we would often rather cling to the myth before our whole belief system starts unravelling.

Fortunately, there are more effective ways to set people straight and make the truth stick. For a start, you should avoid repeating the original story (where possible) and try to come up with a whole alternative to patch up the tear in their mental model. “If I tell you the Moon is not made of cheese, then you find it difficult to give up on the belief – but if I say it’s not cheese but rock, you say ‘OK, fine’, because you still have an idea of what the Moon is like,” explains Lewandowsky.

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