People process new information along a continuum, from very fluently (with great ease) to very disfluently (with great difficulty). Researchers have long recognized that people prefer fluently processed stimuli across a broad range of dimensions. A more recent stream of research suggests that disfluency sometimes produces superior outcomes. In this review, I suggest that disfluency prompts people to process information more carefully, deeply, and abstractly, and mitigates the social problems of overdisclosure and reflexive xenophobia. I conclude by raising several remaining questions that warrant empirical attention.
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