Authority misinfluence tendency

Definitions

An authority can be defined as ”The power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.” or as ”A person or organization having political or administrative power and control.”

Titles, appearances and status symbols

Authorities and their appearance can be divided into three different groups: titles, outer appearance, and status items. One person can be an authority through all the combinations of these groups or with just one of them. Would you believe someone with a bachelor of science in some discipline or a PhD of the same subject? It is harder to dispute someone with a big and fancy title even though he can be wrong as well. Clothes, looks, and other aspects of appearance are effective too. Uniforms, expensive clothes, and handsome or beautiful people look more like authorities than ugly people with old and torn clothes have more authorative power. The latter people are actually more likely to be the ones who are not listened to. Some items can be associated for authoritative items. For example, expensive watches, cars, and other luxury items help people to deliver their messages. There is no guarantee that any of the three characteristics mean that a person is a believable authority.

Real authorities and pseudoexperts

It is not easy to distinguish all the pseudoexperts from the real authorities you should listen to. You can simplify things by putting experts to two different categories. Things that move and require knowledge and are uncertain normally do not have experts. And things that do not move tend to have some experts. You can put the next professions into category in which there are no experts according to psychologist James Shanteau: stockbrokers, clinical psychologists, college admission officers, personnel, court judges, counsilors, intelligence analysts, financial forecasters, finance professors, etc. You can put the next professions into category in which there are some experts: livestock judges, astronomers, test pilots, soil judges, chess masters, physicists, mathematicians who do not work with empirical problems, accountants, and insurance analysts.

The best way to separate real authorities and fools with fancy titles is to check their personal track record. You should find out that these real authorities have managed to deliver better results than others for decades. They are not one hit wonders. All this personal success should be measurable with concrete terms. For example, investors who have managed to beat indices cumulatively for a clear margin for decades or venture capitalists who have helped many companies to achieve huge successes. You also have to remember that these people are experts only in their prospective domains. They are not experts in other things.

There are many pseudoexperts that disguise themselves as experts. They have many usual characteristics. They focus more on appearance than substance, they use professional jargon to explain things instead of using the language everybody can understand, they do not only talk jargon, but they complicate things too much or they explain big results with a single factor, they transfer risks to their clients and take big part of the results for themselves without having any skin in the game, and they are cherished or rewarded by the fools like themselves.

Being an authority figure

Most adults are some kind of authority figures to some kids. If you are a teacher, a parent, a police, or a priest you are likely to be an authority figure to some child. And there is a responsibility to act like one. Actions speak lot louder than words. All people have mirror neurons in their brains. They fire when a person acts and when the same person observes the action performed by another. They are constantly working. When you do something, child´s mirror neurons observe your behavior and can learn from it. When you decide to give an order your child to do something or stop doing something, the frequency is not enough to teach him/her so much. You shouldn´t tell them anything without showing an example. If you want to teach your child to use their smartphones less, you should use less yourself. It is the most effective way of doing it. Giving an order to stop doing something is not that effective. Your child wants to be like you, you should behave they you want them to behave. If you want your children to be better persons, you should be a better person too.

Sources:

The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb
Influence The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini
Poor Charlie´s Almanack, Peter Kaufman

Next text will be published abou 19th of June,

-TT