Science shows why we trust people who are confident. Imagine this: one person tells a lie confidently, while another says something true in a hesitant voice. Which person would you trust?
According to British scientist Dean Burnett, humans are far more likely to believe information expressed confidently by a confident person or in some other ways using confident language.
"Humans trusting confident people over those who are more uncertain is a known thing,"wrote Burnett for Science Focus magazine."When two people are trying to make a decision but each person says different things, confidently expressed arguments are seen as passing on better information,which decides the decision."
Why is this the case? As Burnett said, humans are social animals. In our ancient past, most of our information about the world came from our tribe(部落), in other words, the people around us.So, if ancient humans heard someone confidently saying"There's a tiger coming", believing what that person said could save our lives.
On a more personal level, we use our own experiences to understand what other people do and say. That's how our brain works. When we are confident, it's for good reason. Therefore, we believe that when someone else is being confident, they must have good reason, too.
However, we need to realize that confidently expressed information may be more persuasive (有说服力的), but that doesn't mean it's correct. As Burnett wrote, we are living in a more and more different world. Trusting very confident people without checking the facts can lead to "unexpected results".
