The Moses illusion is a semantic illusion in which listeners or readers fail to recognize an obvious inaccuracy in a text or question. For example, when asked, "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?" people frequently answer "two," failing to notice the false premise that it was Noah, not Moses, who took animals on the ark.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

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- interrupted falsehoods
- illusory truth effect
- Tip-of-the-tongue state
- fact checking
-	source monitoring
-	cognitive shortcuts/ properties of the knowledge base

Terms and Concepts Related to False Beliefs

People often more readily believe information that they hear repeated than they believe novel information.

Illusory Truth Effect

If an individual is distracted or interrupted when they are presented with inaccurate information, they are more likely to misremember that incorrect information as being true.

Interrupted Falsehoods

A frustrating state of being in which one is having difficulty recalling information that is just out of reach.

Tip-Of-The-Tongue State (TOT State)

The Moses Illusion

The process by which a message, when paired with a discounting cue, has a delayed impact on the recipient. For example, if an individual sees the same advertisement on television every day, it begins to lose its initial appeal causing the individual to revert to his/her original attitude about the advertised product.

Sleeper Effect


The failure to engage in reflective, effortful reasoning when encountering new information.

Relying too heavily on our existing heuristic patterns without modifying them.

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