Becoming famous overnight: Limits on the ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past.

Abstract

Nonfamous names presented once in an experiment are mistakenly judged as famous 24 hr later. On an immediate test, no such false fame occurs. This phenomenon parallels the sleeper effect found in studies of persuasion. People may escape the unconscious effects of misleading information by recollecting its source, raising the criterion level of familiarity required for judgments of fame, or by changing from familiarity to a more analytic basis for judgment. These strategies place constraints on the likelihood of sleeper effects. We discuss these results as the unconscious use of the past as a tool vs its conscious use as an object of reflection. Conscious recollection of the source of information does not always occur spontaneously when information is used as a tool in judgment. Rather, conscious recollection is a separate act.

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