User:Cooleen93/sandbox

Communal reinforcement is a social phenomenon in which a concept or idea is repeatedly asserted in a community, regardless of whether sufficient empirical evidence has been presented to support it. Communal reinforcement is a social construction in which a strong belief is formed when a claim is repeatedly asserted by members of a community, rather than due to the existence of empirical evidence for the validity of the claim. Over time, the concept or idea is reinforced to become a strong belief in many people's minds, and may be regarded by the members of the community as fact. Often times, with the publication of mass media, books and other sources, concepts are further enforced regardless of the legitimacy of the claims. The phrase "millions of people can't all be wrong" is indicative of the common tendency to accept a communally reinforced idea without question, which often aids in the widespread acceptance of urban legends, myths, and rumors.

Communal reinforcement works both for true and false concepts or ideas, making the communal reinforcement of an idea independent of its truth value. Therefore, the statement that many persons in a given communities share in a common belief is not indicative of it being valid or false information’s. An idea can be accepted and spread throughout a community regardless of the validity of the claim.

Communal reinforcement can also be a valuable tool for society, in that it reinforces a concept or idea which is beneficial to society, such as discouraging driving under the influence or education will help you achieve a greater life. Conversely it can be viewed as a negative factor if it reinforces ideas which are harmful to society, such as the belief that bathing was avoided in the Medieval Europe.

A possible explanation for communal reinforcement is cryptomnesia, literally, hidden memory. The term was coined by psychology professor Théodore Flournoy (1854-1921) and is used to explain the origin of experiences that people believe to be original but which are actually based on memories of events they've forgotten. It seems likely that most so-called past life regressions induced through hypnosis are confabulations fed by cryptomnesia.