Un-Humble Opinions

Remember the piece I linked to earlier this week on research suggesting that people prefer advice from a confident source, regardless how accurate the source has been in the past? Davin O’Dwyer had a good piece on the same subject in The Irish Times last month:

At first, this quirk of human psychology sounds like an interesting nugget of pop science, until you consider the cumulative cost of this cognitive error. If the result of this psychological quirk were restricted to football commentators embarrassing themselves before a Champions League final, no harm done. Unfortunately, the implications are rather more profound, and dangerous.

★ Thursday, 30 July 2009