^Although we can’t monitor for sincerity or deceptiveness, what about monitoring for competence?
Surely we’re better at recognizing when the people we’re speaking with actually know what they’re talking about, right?
^Unfortunately, the news about
very good either. Consider a study conducted in the 1970s by Donald Naftulin and his colleagues, who gave the name Dr. Myron L. Fox to a television actor to pose as an authority on the application of mathematics to human behavior. The actor was then coached to present an hour-long talk on “Mathematical
Theories of Knowledge LECTURE 18 social Psychology and source Monitoring
Education,” full of nonsense, made-up terms, bad reasoning, and contradictions. Naftulin and his associates then examined the responses to that talk from three separate groups.
] The first group was composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, and social-worker educators attending a conference for educators of health professionals. They attended the talk and then had a half-hour discussion period during which they had an opportunity to question
“Dr. Fox” further.
] The second group consisted of mental health educators—
psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers. The second group, however, merely viewed the lecture and the discussion period on videotape.
] The third group was made up of educators and administrators taking a graduate-level education course. That group also viewed the lecture and discussion on videotape.
^In all of the groups, a vast majority of participants responded positively to the following questions about
“Dr. Fox” and his lecture:
] Did he use enough examples to clarify his material?
] Did he present his material in a well-organized form?
] Did he stimulate your thinking?
] Did he put his material across in an interesting way?
^Some of the terms used in their feedback included “articulate,”
“knowledgeable,” “good analysis of subject that has been personally studied before,” “lively examples,”
“excellent presentation,” “enjoyed listening,” and “too intellectual a presentation.”
^Naftulin and his colleagues reference Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s claim in their book Teaching as a Subversive Activity that
b
it is the sign of a competent crap detector that he is not completely captivated by the arbitrary abstractions of the community in which he happened to grow up [when they conclude that] the three groups of learners in this study, all of whom had grown up in the academic community and were experienced educators, obviously failed as “competent crap detectors” and were seduced by the style of Dr. Fox’s presentation.Considering the educational sophistication of the subjects, it is striking that none of them detected the lecture for what it was.
^The problem is that it is taxing to think too carefully about whether someone is competent. It is easier to rely on superficial signs of
Theories of Knowledge LECTURE 18 social Psychology and source Monitoring
competence—such as whether Myron L. Fox is called “doctor,”
is dressed professionally, or seems competent. Noted social psychologist Robert Cialdini calls this the “click, whirr mode” of reacting.
^Examples of the “click, whirr mode”
abound. For example, in a 1996 study, Joel Cooper and his colleagues had a mock trial jury listen to one of two expert witnesses. The first expert witness, who was introduced as having outstanding credentials, gave a jargon-filled, incomprehensible testimony. The other expert witness gave exactly the same testimony but was introduced as having shaky credentials. The mock trial jury was much more likely to believe the testimony given by the expert witness introduced as having the outstanding credentials—even though the
testimony itself was exactly the same jargon-filled nonsense.
^Surprisingly, when the witness was introduced as having outstanding credentials, the jury found him almost twice as persuasive when he presented his argument incomprehensibly than when he presented the same testimony using terms that the layperson could follow. In other words, the jury found the expert much more convincing when they had no idea what he was talking about!
^The way Cooper and his colleagues made sense of this was that the members of the mock trial jury actually preferred using the easier
“click, whirr mode” of just deferring to the supposed expert’s competence than evaluating his arguments on their merits.
N one of this should make us very optimistic that we’re generally all that reliable at unconsciously monitoring competence, either. So, in other words, we’re three for three: bad at monitoring for sincerity, bad at monitoring for deceptiveness, and bad at monitoring for competence.
]Gelfert, A Critical Introduction to Testimony.
Shieber, Testimony.
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QUIZ
1 TrUe or fAlse
Evidence from psychologist G. Stanley Hall suggests that Laura Bridgman was not capable of the sort of monitoring of testifiers that externalism requires.
2 The case of Laura Bridgman provides the most problems for which of the following?
a Inferentialist non-presumptivism b Presumptivism
c Externalism 3 TrUe or fAlse
If you pay attention to signals like eye contact and demeanor, you can tell when someone is lying.
4 Because of their reliance on what Robert Cialdini calls the “click, whirr mode,” jurors have shown that they prefer expert testimony from which of the following?
a Arguments that the jurors themselves can follow given by experts with poor credentials b Jargon-filled, incomprehensible
arguments given by experts with poor credentials
c Arguments that the jurors themselves can follow given by experts with impressive credentials
d Jargon-filled, incomprehensible arguments given by experts with impressive credentials
]
Answer key can be found on page 207.
yTheories of Knowledge LECTURE 18 QUIZ