The Psychology of Confidence ↦

Troubling new research from Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University revealing that we humans tend to put more stock into confidently asserted opinions than into more nuanced statements of fact:

In Moore’s experiment, volunteers were given cash for correctly guessing the weight of people from their photographs. In each of the eight rounds of the study, the guessers bought advice from one of four other volunteers. The guessers could see in advance how confident each of these advisers was (see table), but not which weights they had opted for.

From the start, the more confident advisers found more buyers for their advice, and this caused the advisers to give answers that were more and more precise as the game progressed. This escalation in precision disappeared when guessers simply had to choose whether or not to buy the advice of a single adviser. In the later rounds, guessers tended to avoid advisers who had been wrong previously, but this effect was more than outweighed by the bias towards confidence.

This last line, especially, should make you think:

So if honest advice risks being ignored, what is a responsible scientific adviser to do? “It’s an excellent question, and I’m not sure that I have a great answer,” says Moore.

This has implications for nearly every facet of our lives, including politics, religion and business. When did you last accept a strongly-worded opinion as fact?