Hyunjin Song
Psychologist, first author with Norbert Schwarz of the 2009 paper testing whether difficulty of pronunciation feeds into judgements of risk. The title states the finding, and this record is explicit that we have read the title and the journal rather than the paper.
Who they are
Song worked with Schwarz on processing fluency and judgement, the research programme concerned with how the ease of taking information in gets mistaken for information about the thing itself.
The 2009 paper in Psychological Science is titled "If It's Difficult to Pronounce, It Must Be Risky", which is unusually plain about its own result. It extends fluency from judgements of truth and value, where most of the earlier work sat, to judgements of risk.
We are being careful about this page. The paper's authorship, year, journal, volume and pages are verified at Crossref. Its abstract was not retrievable and the paper has not been read here, so the finding is reported at the level the title states and no further.
Key papers
Song, H., & Schwarz, N. (2009). "If it's difficult to pronounce, it must be risky." Psychological Science, 20(2), 135-138. First author.
Key ideas
Fluency reaches risk, not only truth and liking. See Processing Fluency and Disfluency Penalty.
Fluency is a relation, not a property. Difficulty of pronunciation depends on the reader's language and familiarity, so any commercial instruction drawn from this needs an audience attached to it.
What this record does not do is describe the paper's design, sample or effect size, because we have not seen them.
Sources
- Song, H., & Schwarz, N. (2009), Psychological Science, 20(2), 135-138, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02267.x. Authorship, year, journal, volume and pages verified at Crossref 1 October 2026. Abstract not retrieved; paper not read here.