Arguing against an opponent's framing repeats and strengthens the frame, so denying a claim can reinforce it.
Lakoff made the argument in Don't Think of an Elephant! (2004), a book written for American progressives: told not to think of an elephant, people think of one. His example was Richard Nixon's 'I am not a crook', which fixed the association it denied. He urged readers to argue within their own frames rather than rebut the other side's.
In practice
- A campaign rebuts a slogan in every speech and ensures its audience hears the slogan daily.
- A company issues a statement insisting it is not a scam, and searches for its name fill with the word.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is associative memory: repeating a term activates its associations whatever the sentence around it says. Another is the illusory truth effect, in which repetition raises perceived truth.
- In its favour
- Consistent with research on framing and on the illusory truth effect, and widely used by campaigners across the spectrum.
- Against it
- Research on corrections has found that repeating a myth while correcting it usually does not strengthen belief in it, and the backfire effect has largely failed to replicate, so the strong version of the claim is not well supported.
- Standing
- Contested on the evidence for its strong form. Compare the framing effect and the backfire effect.
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Theories of what stands between an event and its audience