The Bizarreness Effect
(reading time – 40 sec.)

People show better memory for bizarre sentences relative to common sentences, a finding referred to as the bizarrness effect.

Interestingly, this effect is typically only obtained using a mixed-list design, in which participants study common and bizarre sentences in the same list.

Participants studied common sentences in one room under one set of instructions, and bizarre sentences in another room under another set of instructions. At test, participants recalled the common and bizarre sentences either together or separately.

The results showed that the bizarreness effect was only obtained when participants recalled the common and bizarre items together

Topic: #CognitiveBiases
Source: link.springer.com