We give extra weight to expert or high-status opinions, even when they may be wrong.
More quotesHow tall is a professor? Apparently, about two and a half inches taller than the same bloke introduced as a student.
That is funny until you remember how much business runs on similarly elastic eyesight. Put an ordinary recommendation beneath a famous consultancy logo and suddenly it has “rigour”. Let the most senior person praise a proposal before everyone else speaks and watch independent judgement develop a mysterious limp. Give identical wine a grander label, software a reassuring badge or a speaker a heroic introduction, and people do not merely report liking them more. The borrowed authority becomes part of what they believe they encountered.
I am not proposing we bin credentials and ask the intern to inspect the aircraft engine. Expertise is real. Reputation can save us from rechecking everything from first principles. The mistake is pretending the label only enters after a neutral assessment, when it has already adjusted the lighting. For decisions where the underlying quality matters, I would collect first reactions before revealing authorship, let junior voices speak before the boss and test products blind before testing them branded. Those are not rival versions of reality: the blind test reveals performance; the branded test reveals the market experience. What is daft is asking one to answer both questions. Authority is commercially useful, sometimes deserved and always capable of bending the ruler. Same man. Taller story.