Whether we admit it or not, value attribution affects our perceptions of people. As the book “Sway” illustrates, we may turn down a good idea just because it was pitched by the wrong person or follow blindly the advice of somehow who’s highly regarded. And it doesn’t just happen to us ordinary mortals, but even to the most learned.Case in point is the discoverer of the Homo erectus - an unknown Dutch scientist named Dubois. When he shared his discovery, only a few anthropologists accepted it as authentic. Whereas, when a well-known and well-respected British scientist named Dawson, revealed the Piltdown man, majority of the scientific community embraced it. He had the right credentials and he was after all a fellow at the Geological Society of London. It was only decades after (1952), when the Piltdown man was declared a fraud. The Piltdown man’s skull actually belonged to a medieval man soaked in brown paint to make it look older and its jaw was from a modern orangutan whose teeth were filled to look more human.
On a lighter note is the story of a Coney Island hotdog stand. In 1916, a Polish immigrant tried to sell its hotdogs for half the price but instead of people buying them, most people thought they were inferior because of the cheap price. The owner, thus, recruited doctors from a nearby hospital, to stand by the store and eat hotdogs, wearing their white coats and stethoscopes and guess what? Because people place a high value on physicians, customers figured if doctors were eating there, the food had to be good. That’s when Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs took off.
Additionally, here are 2 interesting studies (independent of each other), that underscore the effect of value attribution -
- In an economics class in MIT, it was announced that the prof was out for the day so a substitute instructor would pitch in. Before the instructor came in, the students were handed out the bio of the professor. Unknown to the students, there were 2 sets that were handed out. Everything was the same in the bio except for one word. One set described the professor as “very warm”, among other nice traits, and the other described him as “rather cold”, together with the same nice traits in the first set. At the end of the session, the students were asked to evaluate the instructor and when you read the results, you’d think the students were assessing 2 different instructors! Those who received the bio with the “warm” description perceived him as good natured, considerate and sociable while those that got the bio with the “cold” description perceived him as self-centered, irritable and humorless. To think that these students were in the same class and participated in the same discussion!
- Yale conducted a special hearing test among seniors over the age of 70. After the hearing test, they were asked a question not related to the hearing test – what are the first 5 words or phrases that come to mind when you think of an old person? The answers given can be classified into 4 – positive (eg. compassionate), negative (eg. feeble), external (eg. white hair) and internal (eg. experienced). After 3 years, the same seniors took the same hearing test. But not everyone’s hearing deteriorated but some deteriorated far worse off, particularly those who answered negative and external descriptors. The extent of deterioration for some was equivalent to 8 years of normal aging! In short, negative and external feelings about old age can actually make people physically age faster!
First, we should view people with a positive or at least clean slate. No pre-judgments and biases just because someone said so. Good if you have positive preconceptions but starting with something negative is like depriving a person of a chance to present himself.
Second, a single word has the power to alter the whole perception of another person so we should always be careful with what we say about other people. If we’ve nothing positive to say about a person, it’s really better to just shut up. :)
And third, we should strive to be positive – it’s the best defense against aging! Haha…
