
Humans prefer cockiness to expertise - kungfooey
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227115.500-humans-prefer-cockiness-to-expertise.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
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dschobel
It sounds crazy but I've seen this in action. At my last job they brought in a
guy who was unmitigated disaster for a technical leadership position.

In short, he was the most arrogant, buzz-word filled SOB I ever had the
displeasure of meeting,

After he finally got booted when people realized he didn't know a damn thing
about technology I flat out asked the VP of engineering: "What did you ever
see in him?".

He said: "You know, you're going to think I'm crazy, but he was exactly the
same in the interview as he was around here daily, and I really thought that
cockiness would mean he would take the lead on issues and be able to guide the
younger guys".

So remember that kids, if you want to be seen as leadership material,
thoughtfulness and pensiveness are not the way to go about it.

Just look at CTOs at companies you respect for further proof and see how many
timid figures you find.

~~~
nostrademons
Sounds crazy but I've used this in action. How do you think I got such high
karma here? ;-)

Thing is - it _works_. Both online and in-person. I'd much rather be honest
about how little I know (and often am when I'm working long-term with
someone), but I've found it's a losing strategy in most situations. If you
_do_ know your stuff, you'll just get shouted down by idiots. Better to shout
the idiots down first and then do the research to make sure you're not wrong.
If you screw up everything, you'll probably get another chance simply by
virtue of confidence (look at John Meriweather, who nearly brought down the
global financial system three times and is still managing money), but if you
appear timid and then screw up, people are all like "I knew he didn't really
know what he was talking about..."

~~~
stcredzero
The confidence thing is probably another leftover from the Stone Age. It
probably works better for combat and mammoth hunting.

~~~
rw140
Actually, I find confident people much easier to evaluate - over time it's
pretty easy to tell a bullshitter from someone who knows their stuff. When
talking to people who hedge their bets too much (or worse still, don't speak
up at all unless I have the time to prompt an answer out of them), I'm left
with an unclear idea of their original position, so it's much harder to decide
whether to trust them.

My favourite people are still those who state their conclusion, but will
happily rattle off the list of assumptions they used to get there as well as
how confident they are in that conclusion. But those people are pretty rare.

~~~
wallflower
> Actually, I find confident people much easier to evaluate.

The same goes for why we may like extroverted people more than introverted
types. Because with most extroverts, you're getting a relatively good
impression of what they're about...because they're putting themselves out
there (expressing their opinions); whereas with introverted types, you're
using mental cycles trying to figure out what's their view/what do they want

~~~
rw140
May well be true, although there's a difference between being introverted and
not having an opinion.

There are no shortage of extroverts who aren't going to let not having
anything to say stop them from saying it. On the other side of the equation,
if you manage to persuade your introverts to share their conclusions, you can
get a beautiful signal-to-noise ratio.

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nostrademons
Feynman wrote about this in _The Meaning of it All_ \- he thought one of the
major problems with American society today (1960s) was that people could no
longer distinguish confidence and expertise. The media has to have an answer
for everything, even if that answer was a total guess. He thought that people
ought to look much more favorably upon someone who says "I don't know, but I
know how to find out" over someone who says "This is the answer, but I can't
tell you how I got it."

~~~
jfarmer
Has that ever been the case?

~~~
nostrademons
Much of the Enlightenment was centered around that ideal - that authority
figures do not have all the answers, but reason provides us with a means to
figure them out. And it turned out to be quite successful - it brought us
modern science, and evidence-based medicine, and the industrial revolution,
and most of the progress of the last four centuries.

~~~
mleonhard
Did you write that first and then look it up to see if it is correct?

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tokenadult
"The findings add weight to the idea that if offering expert opinion is your
stock-in-trade, it pays to appear confident."

What implications does this have for online discussion?

P.S. after edit: I've related before one observational study of men picking up
women in bars. When the men were prompted to act "confident," they had limited
luck in getting dates. When they were told to act "arrogant" they had much
better success. That's rather dismaying to me in what it says about women. I
don't know if this result has been replicated (he said, to be honest at the
expense of looking confident).

~~~
pierrefar
I guess "I don't know" is a bad answer to your question.

~~~
req2
What about "I'd google it"?

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anamax
In many cases, folks have no basis for judging expertise. However, they often
need to make decisions.

When someone says "I know", there are three possibilities. They do know, they
don't and they're lying, and they don't know but don't know that they don't
know. Many people think that they can pick out liars, so they're only tricked
by folks who don't know what they don't know.

When someone says that they don't know, there are also three possibilities.
They actually don't know, they actually do know and are lying, and they
actually do know but don't know that they know. However, there's a big "why
bother" here. Lying doesn't make any sense and if they're wrong about what
they know, how are they going to help you decide when to believe them?

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ccc3
The title seems a bit misleading. Humans don't prefer cockiness to expertise,
they just have a hard time differentiating between the two.

~~~
tokenadult
_Humans don't prefer cockiness to expertise, they just have a hard time
differentiating between the two._

If human beings can't recognize nuanced, tentative conclusions as a sign of
expertise, they definitely have a problem.

~~~
falsestprophet
_If human beings can't recognize nuanced, tentative conclusions as a sign of
expertise, they definitely have a problem._

Well, I can recognize this statement as an unsubstituted, cocky declaration
rather than a nuanced, tentative conclusion.

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petercooper
I've seen a lot of this in the programming world. Certain
ideas/libraries/techniques will be created and professed so emphatically by
their proponent that people accept them as gospel and "the right way." In
reality, they're no better (or are sometimes worse) than the alternatives
(testing framework, "best practices/agile", and source control standpoints are
recent such issues).

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, since overly confident people
can often be stretched into living up to their claims and genius can often
result from that. I'd actually consider David Heinemeier Hansson an example of
this. He has admitted his lack of experience when he started programming in
Ruby and building Rails (as part of Basecamp) but his emphatic delivery of its
benefits back in 2004 led to him picking up followers, gaining marketshare,
learning a lot and becoming the genuinely gifted visionary we have today.

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bjelkeman-again
You see this affect the way start-ups are being pitched as well. Cocky sales
pitches are preferred over cautious or realistic pitches (even if the buyer
says otherwise).

So be cocky and back it up with expertise when they start digging. :D

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pj
I suppose it is just going to get worse and worse. We will see run away
selection if women continue to choose arrogance over substance.

~~~
nostrademons
Well, usually what happens is that there's some cataclysmic event where
reality intervenes and says "Uh, no, you actually don't know what you're
talking about." Then all the arrogant folks die off (or permanently lose
credibility) and get replaced by folks who were right all along but were more
quiet about it.

We're seeing this in the newspaper industry (all the sensationalist, content-
free papers are dying off because we can get sensationalist, content-free news
free off the Internet) and the financial industry (all the folks who thought
unlimited leverage and perpetual debt spending was a good thing are getting
squeezed mighty hard by deflation, even though the government is doing its
best to bail them out). Meanwhile, geekdom is becoming increasingly sexier, as
women realize that geeks have the goods and the suits just have the sparkle.

~~~
DenisM
>usually what happens is that there's some cataclysmic event

Don't look now, but the whole of economy is not in a great shape.

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haseman
This further validates my longstanding theory that the winner of any argument
won't be the person who's right, it'll be the person who thinks they are right
the most.

~~~
dschobel
Have you ever seen Ann Coulter in action?

It's amazing how far you get on fervent belief + debate skills.

~~~
steve_mobs
i guess fox news has got the formula down. you for forgot bill oreilly.

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tezza
And Scientific Researchers prefer topics that grab headlines to more worthy
research.

From :: <http://www.twin-research.ac.uk/publications.html>

Research::

* Emotional intelligence and its association with orgasmic frequency in women

Result ::

* Metro.co.uk :: Intelligent women enjoy more sex

[http://www.metro.co.uk/metrosexual/article.html?Intelligent_...](http://www.metro.co.uk/metrosexual/article.html?Intelligent_women_enjoy_more_sex&in_article_id=656133&in_page_id=8)

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edw519
According to Webster:

cockiness: boldly or brashly self-confident

confidence: a: a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on
one's circumstances <had perfect confidence in her ability to succeed> <met
the risk with brash confidence> b: faith or belief that one will act in a
right, proper, or effective way <have confidence in a leader>

Big difference.

On many technical issues, confidence is necessary but not sufficient.
Cockiness, OTOH, is often used when confidence doesn't exist (see "poser").

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brlewis
Love the subtle self-referential joke at the end.

~~~
SwellJoe
Agreed. I laughed out loud at the punchline. Scientists are sometimes
hilarious.

------
gcheong
Genuine confidence comes from expertise gained by experience which is probably
why, when people rely on information from a person with expertise that they do
not possess themselves, confident experts are preferred over hesitant ones.
However, like all cognitive shortcuts, it is not a perfect proxy.

------
WilliamLP
The corollary to this is that if you actually _do_ know better than the people
around you, you should act like an arrogant SOB or you're just going to get
ignored. Having learned this I've seen an improvement in all areas of life,
except that people don't like me on internet forums much:)

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chengas123
The guy who did this research was probably the best professor I've ever had.
He taught a negotiation class in my MBA program and for every single
negotiation tactic you could think of, he had a movie clip that demonstrated
it. Class was always entertaining.

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auston
I don't see what most people commenting here do?

The "guessers" here were not given an option to see the "advisers" previous
track record / experience - how can they prefer one to the other if they are
only given the "advisers" confidence level?

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tybris
That's sad, but also a bit black & white. People can be cocky and have
expertise.

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ahoyhere
Anyone who lives in the world of human society knows that this is true,
regardless of the linkbait title, because nobody can know everything and that
confidence is one of the few metrics everyone can assess.

Human nature doesn't change.

~~~
kragen
In the experiment, people actually had information about expertise.

~~~
auston
where? I only saw them list each "advisers" confidence level?

~~~
kragen
There were eight rounds in the experiment. The NS article says, "In the later
rounds, guessers tended to avoid advisers who had been wrong previously."

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polos
Yes, humans are very superficial, most of the time.

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adrianwaj
Barack Obama's cocky, wouldn't one say? Good in times of uncertainty and
change.

