

Study Shows Speaking Up More Makes You Seem More Competent... Even if You're Not - thinkzig
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1878358,00.html?cnn=yes

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nazgulnarsil
we use social signaling to communicate in ways we aren't aware of. In tests
researchers found they could successfully predict outcomes of conversations
based entirely on body language. The fact that most people are unconscious of
these signals means you can hack them. This is largely what the "pick-up"
community is about.

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alabut
Studying body language reveals really interesting things during group tasks.
It reminds me of a study on how perceived authority makes people jerks, even
when leaders are picked out of thin air. Researchers did something similar to
the study in the link - break people into small groups; give the subjects a
fake task that they thought they were working on together but were unknowingly
being tested on how subtle teamwork and leadership issues; randomly assigned
somebody to be a leader; etc.

Then they gave them cookies to eat while they did their work.

And they found - without fail! - that it was always the leader that ate an
extra cookie (they'd serve 4 cookies for 3 people), ate and spoke with their
mouths open, spilled crumbs everywhere, did the least work, and just were
general slobs. Regardless of gender, education, yadda yadda.

Scary that we all have jerk potential, no?

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jfarmer
Interesting. Do you have a link to that study? I can't find it on Google.

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alabut
Sorry, google's giving me no love either and I tried digging through my
delicious bookmarks too.

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teej
Dacher Keltner (or his lab at UC-Berkeley) did the original research. I can't
find this one specifically, but their website is
<http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~keltner/>

I managed to track it down with the search term 'leadership research "four
cookies"' which led me to something with a reference to the study -
[http://www.yourofficecoach.com/YOCOfficeInsights/OI_bosses.h...](http://www.yourofficecoach.com/YOCOfficeInsights/OI_bosses.htm)

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FlorinAndrei
Uh-huh. The next study will reveal that the sky is blue and the water is wet.

This should be obvious for anyone who has spent a number of years in the
corporate world - have you never seen that staple of the corp environment, the
moron with no skills but a loud mouth and no scruples?

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khafra
Studies which confirm intuitive truths can be valuable, especially when that
truth is cultural or contradicted by other popular wisdom (i.e. "it is better
to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt;" or
contrast this American study's results with the common idea of Japanese as
valuing the humble, quiet type).

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cglee
Absolutely. I'd like to see them repeat the experiment in Japan or China. I'd
hypothesize the results won't be the same.

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iron_ball
I'd bet they would be, on the principle that these things are rooted in our
primate nature.

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Jem
This doesn't just apply to the corporate world. As a blogger, each time I blog
in an authoritative manner I find more people bending over backwards to hear
what I've got to say (even when I'm talking total rubbish.)

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te_platt
I wonder how this relates to how we view karma on HN. Is higher karma meant to
imply higher competence? The average karma per comment experiment from a few
days ago seemed designed around that concept. Is karma just another way of
making us feel more important or capable?

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jwesley
I see karma as a way to motivate more activity on the site. It turns
participating into a game that you can win, which gets people's competitive
juices flowing. We all love measuring ourselves against other people.

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whacked_new
Let me be your first counterexample. I can't care less about the number
attached to my account. You want to up mine? Be my guest.

Aside of this though, it is easy to get a high Karma/posts ratio. How to do
it? If you know damn well what you're talking about every time you post, you
will accrue lots of Karma from being informative. There are a few gurus here
and they're easy to spot. They will have high Karma, whether they care or not.

Some, like me, who aren't biological data troves, are happy to expose their
ignorance and ask stupid questions, and deal with occasional (and mysterious)
downmods.

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pasbesoin
80% of management is emotional. Just like 80% of statistics are made up.

