{"id":349,"date":"2014-02-14T13:04:17","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T21:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/health\/?p=349"},"modified":"2014-03-09T12:57:07","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T19:57:07","slug":"smart-trainers-believe-stupid-things-part-2-dr-fox-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/health\/2014\/02\/14\/smart-trainers-believe-stupid-things-part-2-dr-fox-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Smart Trainers Believe Stupid Things: (Part 2) The Dr. Fox Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0Nick Tumminello<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally published December 12, 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

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It\u2019s no secret that as humans we disagree on just about everything from politics to proper personal training practices. However, we all share the exact same desire, which is to have as few\u00a0false<\/em>\u00a0beliefs as possible, and as many\u00a0true<\/em>\u00a0beliefs as possible. In other words, we all want our views and practices to lawfully align with reality.<\/p>\n

One of the problems is that some people are using reliable epistemological processes (i.e. ways of knowing) while others are using\u00a0less<\/em>\u00a0reliable epistemic processes. And, as I addressed in my\u00a0Evil Sugar Radio podcast\u00a0<\/a>on\u00a0How to Detect B.S.<\/em><\/a>, unreliable epistemologies are\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0likely to lead to unreliable conclusions. The other problem is that being human means being fallible \u2013 your favorite fitness \u201cexperts\u201d are just as fallible as you are. So regardless of how\u00a0smart<\/em>\u00a0we are, the body of science done in the\u00a0social psychology<\/em><\/a>\u00a0arena has shown us a Baskin-Robins variety of cognitive bias, heuristics, and logical fallacies that not only cause us ALL to misjudge the evidence of our own experiences, but also cause us to often form false beliefs and then reinforce them as true.<\/p>\n

The purpose of this\u00a0Why Smart Trainers Believe Stupid Things<\/em>\u00a0(WSTBST) series, as I said in my first installment to this series covering the\u00a0Bias Toward Positive Evidence<\/a>, is to help fitness professionals recognize these non-negotibale psychological realities, and overcome them in order to\u00a0arrive at more sound judgments, and more valid beliefs about your personal training practices. (And about everything else in life, as our beliefs inlfuence our actions.)<\/p>\n

Duped by the Dr. Fox Effect!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s installment of my WSTBST series focuses on the\u00a0Dr. Fox effect<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0a\u00a0phenomenon in which the style of a lecture can impress\u00a0even sophisticated learners, and trick them into mistaking meaningless content\u00a0for education of actual substance.\u00a0This comes from a classic and eye opening series of studies investigating the Dr. Fox effect. (Naftulin et al., 1973; Williams and Ware, 1975, 1976).<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0first Dr. Fox experiment<\/a>\u00a0(done in 1973) the researchers hired an actor to pose as an expert (Dr. Fox) and deliver a lecture on\u00a0game theory<\/a>\u00a0to a group of\u00a0true<\/em>\u00a0experts on the subject. \u201cDr. Fox\u201d who was billed as an \u201cauthority\u201d on the \u201capplication of mathematics to human behavior\u201d and his lecture was given an impressive title: \u201cMathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actor (Dr. Fox) was trained only\u00a0one day prior to giving lecture,\u00a0which, although his lecture was loosely based on the 1962\u00a0Scientific American<\/i><\/a>\u00a0article by American mathematical psychologist\u00a0Anatol Rapoport<\/a>, \u201cThe Use and Misuse of Game Theory;\u201d\u00a0the lecture intentionally prevented him from saying anything meaningful.\u00a0In other words, the day before, the actor and researchers worked up an absolutely meaningless, but entertaining lecture full of complex sounding jargon, useless analogies, jokes, incomprehensible jabbering, and excessive double talk.<\/p>\n

\"fox_lectures\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The authors hypothesized that\u00a0given a sufficiently impressive lecture paradigm, even experienced educators participating in a new learning experience can be seduced into feeling satisfied that they have learned despite irrelevant, conflicting, and meaningless content conveyed by the lecturer.<\/i><\/p>\n

The actor (Dr. Fox) was very worried that he\u2019d be exposed by the actual experts on game theory who were his audience.\u00a0But after the 20-minutes-long talk was over, the audience bombarded him with questions, which he also answered, and still nobody noticed.\u00a0Not to mention,\u00a0the audience gave \u201cDr. Fox\u201d high ratings on a post-lecture evaluation form. All ten people who attended the lecture said that it had given them food for thought, while nine of them said that Dr.Fox had presented the material in a clear, well-organized manner that incorporated plenty of good illustrative examples into his talk.<\/p>\n

These results confirm the hypothesis that the audience members were seduced into believing a\u00a0meaningless<\/em>\u00a0lecture gave them\u00a0meaningful<\/em>\u00a0information. And, given their level of academic achievement, this (false) impression was not due to a lack of intelligence or knowledge of the subject matter.<\/p>\n

This video shows you clips of the actual Dr. Fox lecture interspersed with a summary of the study:<\/p>\n