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Running debate with a partner...

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	Dr. Fox was an actor who looked distinguished and sounded authoritative. He was provided with a fictitious but impressive biography and was sent to lecture about a subject on which he knew nothing. The talk, "Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education," was delivered on three occasions to a total of 55 people. One hour was allowed for the talk and 30 minutes for discussion. The audiences consisted of highly educated social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, and administrators. The lecture was comprised of double talk, meaningless words, false logic, contradictory statements, irrelevant humor, and meaningless references to unrelated topics. Judging from a questionnaire administered after the talk, the audience found Dr. Fox's lecture to be clear and stimulating. None of the subjects realized that the lecture was pure nonsense [Naftulin et al., 1973]. If an unintelligible communication is received from a legitimate source and if this communication claims to be in the recipient's area of expertise, recipients might assume that they are wasting their time because they receive no useful knowledge. In terms of knowledge, they would be wasting their time. But their involvement in this activity may lead them to try to justify the time spent. Furthermore, the greater the unintelligibility, the greater the need to rationalize about the time spent (e.g., if you cannot understand a paper, it must be a high level paper). This might be called the Dr. Fox hypothesis: An unintelligible communication from a legitimate source in the recipient's area of expertise will increase the recipient's rating of the author's competence. [img]http://www.lunaslovechild.com/logos/thumper.gif[/img] Loading...
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