Bizareness Effect

18/07/2025 41 min
Bizareness Effect

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Episode Synopsis

The bizarreness effect is a psychological phenomenon defined as the increased likelihood of people remembering information that is strange or unusual compared to information that is mundane or expected. This effect has a significant impact on memory recall. Memory training experts have long advocated associating information with bizarre imagery to improve recall. The effect typically occurs when bizarre and common information are intermixed. While complex stimuli are generally less conducive to the effect, it can emerge with sufficient processing time. Key theoretical explanations include the distinctiveness account, which suggests that the uniqueness of bizarre items leads to extra processing, and the elaborative processing view, which states that bizarre stimuli attract more attention and require more working memory resources. Crucially, the bizarreness effect also heavily relies on retrieval processes, often only appearing when common and bizarre items are recalled togetheThe Entire Behavioural Science Reading List on Amazon https://amzn.to/4juLQTM

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