Fame v. Accuracy in Persuasion
Columnists in both the New York Times and Newsweek in the last few weeks have discussed how often we tend to be persuaded by people who are just plain wrong. And, as a follow-up to our media and conflict resolution conference last week, it was interesting to realize what part the media plays in helping the wrong people to continually have outlets for their mistaken predications. As Sharon Begley wrote:
Pointing out how often pundits’ predictions are not only wrong but egregiously wrong — a 36,000 Dow! euphoric Iraqis welcoming American soldiers with flowers! — is like shooting fish in a barrel, except in this case the fish refuse to die. No matter how often they miss the mark, pundits just won’t shut up. . . . The fact that being chronically, 180-degrees wrong does not disqualify pundits is in large part the media’s fault: cable news, talk radio and the blogosphere need all the punditry they can rustle up, track records be damned. But while we can’t shut pundits up, we can identify those more likely to have an accurate crystal ball when it comes to forecasts from the effect of the stimulus bill to the likelihood of civil unrest in China. Knowing who’s likely to be right comes down to something psychologists call cognitive style, and with that in mind Philip Tetlock, a research psychologist at Stanford University, would like to introduce you to foxes and hedgehogs.
If you like thinking about the way lawyers use words and how and why that usage is different from the way normal people, er, I mean, non-lawyers use words, take a moment this Friday afternoon to read 