DISCOVERIES
YOU’RE HARDWIRED TO TRUST CONFIDENT VOICES… EVEN WHEN THEY’RE WRONG
COMMENT
Human evolution has led to us naturally believing statements that are delivered in a more assured manner
ILLUSTRATION: BERNARD LEONARDO
Alie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. It’s a well-known phrase. But a more accurate version would be: a confidently told lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.
Lies can travel so much quicker because we humans are far more likely to accept and believe information delivered confidently by a confident person, or some other source, using confident language. And as the modern world has repeatedly shown us, this regularly leads to undesirable outcomes.
Humans trusting confident people over those who are more uncertain is an established phenomenon. The ‘confidence heuristic’ states that when two (or more) people are trying to make a decision but each person knows different things, confidently expressed arguments are perceived as conveying better information, which determines the decision.