A hint of doubt helps experts

A series of studies in 2010 showed that when an ‘expert’ is prepared to express minor doubts about their advice and opinions, their audience actually buys into them more, particularly if their views concern a question for which no single, objectively clear answer exists. It works something like this. When a Messenger is already perceived as competent expresses uncertainty, the audience tends to think, somewhat paradoxically, that if they are confident enough in their analysis and judgements to admit that uncertainty, then they must be reliable. Perhaps the time has come, 2,000 years on, to update Virgil’s sage advice. Rather than ‘believe an expert’ it should perhaps read ‘believe an uncertain expert’.