The scene
A clip arrives in a family group. A face you know says a sentence they would never say. For a second the perceptual system treats seeing as evidence of presence. Then someone writes is this real? The doubt leaks onto the next clip.
Named evidence
Johnson and colleagues (1993) review source monitoring: deciding where a memory or percept came from. The system is already fallible. Fluency and familiarity make media feel true. Detection research is partly adversarial and dates quickly; this magazine will not cite a detector as settled.
The durable story is psychological: overconfidence in one’s eye, motivated reasoning, verification fatigue. Pause before forwarding. Provenance should be a default, not a hobbyist setting.
Evidence & provenance2 sources · production record
Source record
Sources stay inspectable so the boundary between reporting and interpretation remains visible.
- 01Johnson MK, Hashtroudi S, Lindsay DS (1993). Source monitoring — Psychological Bulletin
- 02PSYTECH News editorial constitution — PSYTECH — House method: scene → claim → named evidence → implication. Editorial, not clinical.
Production
Editorial production
Human review
Not recorded for this release