214 Understanding Intuitive Decision Making
Euphonious Sound Effects: The Appeal of Melodious Messages
Words and sentences that sound good are more persuasive than those that do not. For example,
audiences are more likely to decide a statement is true when it is expressed in a rhyming form.
Made-up sayings expressed in a rhyming form, such as “woes unite foes,” are more likely to be
judged as true than the same sayings expressed in a nonrhyming form, for instance “woes unite
enemies.”^69 Audiences are more likely to judge a rhyming statement to be true simply because it
is easier to process.^70
Political scientists fi nd that candidates have a better chance of being elected when their namesare euphonious, as was true in the case of a LaRouche, Illinois election in which a candidate
with the surname of Fairchild defeated a candidate with the less euphonious-sounding surname
of Sangmeister.^71 In general, audiences judge easy-to-pronounce names more positively than
diffi cult-to-pronounce ones. This may explain in part why attorneys with easy-to-pronounce sur-
names tend to occupy higher status positions in law fi rms^72 and why easy-to-pronounce, fl uently
named stocks perform better than disfl uently named ones.^73
Repetition Effects: The Appeal of the Familiar
Audience members prefer stimuli they have encountered before and recognize as familiar.^74 One
of the best-known perceptual biases and one of the fi rst to be identifi ed is the mere-exposure effect. 75
Mere or repeated exposure to a stimulus without any reinforcement leads to more fl uent perceptual
processing and a gradual increase in liking.^76
For example, songs with repetitive lyrics are processed more fl uently and thus adopted morebroadly and quickly than songs without much repetition. The more repetitive the lyrics, the
greater the odds of debuting in the Top 40 and the less time it takes to reach #1.^77 Numbers in a
sequence that are repetitive, in the sense that they are multiples of one another, are processed more
fl uently. This so-called numeracy effect can lead consumers to choose deals that offer less value for
the money but feature a combination of numbers that are easier to process.^78 Familiarity with a
risky option can lower an investor’s perceptions of risk and create the home bias effect in invest-
ing—the tendency of investors to invest more money than is prudent into stocks of their home
country or into stock of the company they work for.^79 Repeated exposure to news coverage of a
given issue leads audience members to rate the issue as more important.^80 Repeated exposure to
the source of persuasive arguments, even subliminal or supraliminal exposure, leads audiences to
be more persuaded by the arguments.^81
Other equally fascinating examples of repetition effects have been identifi ed as well. Names thatthe audience has been exposed to repeatedly seem more famous than other names.^82 Hearing the same
question asked repeatedly leads audiences to increase their confi dence in the answer they hear.^83 Asking
audiences to repeatedly express an attitude leads them to maintain that attitude with increased cer-
tainty.^84 And when the audience has already formulated a response to a piece of information, repeated
exposure to it can accentuate their response.^85 Thus, repeating information that the audience judges to
be negative can make that information seem even more negative to them.^86
Perhaps the most signifi cant fi nding is that the more often any message is repeated to an audi-ence, the more likely the audience is to judge it as true.^87 A classic study of how rumors spread
during World War II shows that the best predictor of whether an audience will believe a rumor is
the number of times they have heard the rumor repeated.^88 Similarly, the number of times the audi-
ence is exposed to advertisements, trivia statements, or even foreign words predicts how likely they
are to believe them.^89 Even when repeated statements are explicitly identifi ed as false, audiences are
more likely to judge them as true.^90