Thursday, November 20, 2008

Catching Slick

Martha Lagace talks to Todd Rogers about being able to spot artful dodges. An excerpt:

"More troublingly, listeners preferred speakers who answered the wrong question well over those who answered the right question poorly," the authors note.

"In this research we find that, at least in part, people value style over substance because the style blinds us to the lack of substance," says Rogers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A real case of our interest in the style, not substance. Presentation is so important. I'm thinking this is another reason why people selected Obama over McCain - the cool and calm over angry and mean.

Michael Wade said...

Marsha,

I think a key distinction was that overall Obama came across as more optimistic and usually the more optimistic candidate wins. This, of course, has nothing to do with substance.