0 for 5 on Persuasion Quiz
24th January 2008
Okay, kids, today you can take a Persuasion Quiz!
Yay!
I hope you did better than I. 0 for 5 for me. Imagine that. Here I am a self styled Internet expert on all things Persuasion and Influence. And I scored 0 for 5. Hey, for those of you with a probability background you know that guessing on 5 multiple choice items each with 5 options should produce 1 correct guess. Do you know how hard it is to deliberately pick 5 consecutive incorrect answers?
That’s not a rhetorical question. What is the a priori probability of 0 for 5? I can’t immediately recall the formula.
I just took the quiz again and got 2 of 5. And again to get 3 of 5. And, now, finally after 4 attempts, I get 5 for 5. Oddly enough, the start up of the quiz advises that you can take it as many times as you’d like, but the questions will change. For my several attempts, each quiz was the same (how do you think I got better?).
I also disagree with some of the “correct” answers.
Juries rate as more believable expert witnesses who speak in incomprehensible language compared to experts who use easy to comprehend language or who appear honest? I need to see the research on that.
People are more likely to support you on some issue if you give: 1, 3, 5 or as many reasons as you can think of. The correct response is: give 1 reason. What? Argument quantity can function as an argument or a cue (or a moderator, but that’s something else), but regardless the research tends to show that more arguments produce more change. Not just one.
What is so surprising to me about this quiz is that it is written by people with serious academic backgrounds, most particularly Robert Cialdini. His great book, “Influence,” would directly refute the quiz.
The quiz is an excellent teaching tool and marketing device and I don’t have any problem with it as a tactic here. I just strongly question the content of this quiz. What else scares me is that I could be reading the same research literature and can’t pass a quiz written by other folks reading the same stuff.
Gotta love social science.