Does admitting doubt make you more credible?
"Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything."
I love this quote from Robert Rubin, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary, because it states so cleverly something I often feel.
If you say “X,” I automatically think, “But what about Y?” and “Is X always X”?
Aside from driving my husband occasionally bonkers, this thought pattern also feels at odds with a culture that values straight-talking self-confidence.
Therefore I also love this Stanford Business School study (unfortunately avail only to Harvard Business Review subscribers) suggesting that experts are more persuasive when they express doubt.
The researchers asked people what they’d pay for a meal at a fictional restaurant called Bianco’s. Some of the people read a review of Bianco’s that was certain ( “A Confident 4 Out of 5 Stars”) and others a review that was less sure (“A Tentative 4 Out of 5 Stars.”)
The surprise results? People who read the uncertain review said they were willing to pay 56% more than those who’d read the confident review.
The researchers speculate that the reason for this is a phenomenon called “expectancy violations.” We expect experts to be confident; tentativeness surprises us; and surprise makes an impact.
But could it be that people who admit doubt are simply more credible?
We all know that things are rarely what they seem. So we suspect that people who are very certain of their opinions are probably glossing over ambiguities. That doubtful and hesitant people are simply telling it like it is. That they are the true straight-talkers among us.
Maybe.
Do you tend to be certain in your opinions? Do you tend to be less sure?
Does it vary by subject?
And how do you react to the certainty of others?
We always love to hear from you, and for you to hear from each other!
Oh I really like this one! I grew up surrounded by certainty in a family dogmatically religious. I had a very bad night when I was a Sophomore in high school, when I thought I’d sneak into the house and slip into bed, I was drunk, and when I saw my dark neighborhood, my own house beamed with light.. my parents were awake and waiting for me. Very bad night!
My mother then forced me to have devotions and pray with her every morning before school (didn’t like it, but she was at her wits end!)
This worked! It turned me around, and bent me toward their certainties, and 2 years later I was headed toward college in pursuit of a career based on certainty, a minister. But deep, deep down, underneath it all, there existed “the natural me”.
I graduated and it was while I was filling out my application for seminary to pursue a master’s degree that the crisis hit me smack in the face, and basically the natural me bubbled up, and I knew, uncertainty was calling me back to myself.
I put my pen down, quit the application… the life in front of me, of a certain pathway, and a certain career vanished into thin air, and I didn’t know what I was going to do, I had to start over, and it was a bit uncomfortable.
But you know what? I began to be free to be the kind of person I am by my very nature. It wasn’t long after that I felt, “oh how wonderful it is to be free from certain knowing!”. It felt like real freedom! I felt free of having to defend the thoughts and positions that I’d always had doubts about, it felt like a cleansing wave! And shortly after that, I discovered I enjoy curiosity!
In a sense, that day where I put down my pen, and walked away from certainty is in a very real way my birthday!
I love the words, “I don’t know”. And around others who feel certain, I say, “You may be right, but I don’t know.”
Love this post of yours today!
I do have a tendency of ending sentences with “I may be wrong about that” when I’m not sure about something. I think it opens the door to discussion especially since I admittedly may be wrong about a lot of things and am always looking for others viewpoints. It’s not that I don’t trust the definitive answers but too many coming from one source makes me question the openness of their ability to hear other people’s opinion. Of course…this is just my 2 cents and I may be wrong 😊