#34: Authority Bias: Why nine in ten dentists recommend this episode

Doesn't it seem strange that from the moment we're born, we're taught that following instructions is the right thing to do? In this episode, Mel and Dan discuss the authority bias, and why carrying around a clipboard could be the best thing you ever do.

Mel:                             00:17                Hi, and welcome to Bad Decisions.

Dan:                             00:19                The show that helps us understand why we choose what we choose.

Mel:                             00:22                Why we think what we think.

Dan:                             00:23                And how to exploit this stuff for fun and commercial gain.

Mel:                             00:25                Always ethically.

Dan:                             00:26                Always.

Mel:                             00:27                I'm Dr. Mel Weinberg. I'm a performance psychologist.

Dan:                             00:29                And I'm Dan Monheit, co-founder of Hardhat.

Mel:                             00:31                And this is [Cuts 00:00:32] with the music.

Dan:                             00:39                All right, yo. Hey Mel, how are you?

Mel:                             00:41                I'm good, Dan, how are you going?

Dan:                             00:42                Very good. So I've been thinking as we're starting to return back to some form of normality, there are a few things from COVID 2020-life that I think I will miss, and I'm having trouble letting go of, and one of them is the Saturday movie night, where there is literally no expectation that I'm going to get dressed or go out. And really, I'm just going to sit on the couch, get takeaway food and enjoy a movie.

Mel:                             01:08                Do you do it with Chinese food? That's my default.

Dan:                             01:11                Not a huge fan. Maybe I just haven't had the right type of Chinese food. Italian is the big hit in my household. But even though we're now allowed to go out, I still am choosing to largely ignore that and enjoy the comforts of my own home and my various streaming subscriptions. And I'll tell you what. I watched an absolute cracker last weekend. I'm sure you've seen it.

Mel:                             01:29                What'd you watch?

Dan:                             01:30                Well, it's not Space Jam.

Mel:                             01:43                What did you watch after Space Jam?

Dan:                             01:43                After Space Jam? I watched Catch Me If You Can.

Mel:                             01:47                Good movie. Classic. Leo.

Dan:                             01:50                Nothing has made me want to go to a costume shop, rent a hat, and then go and fly a plane more than Catch Me If You Can, because apparently that's all it takes. Just get a hat.

Mel:                             02:00                It's not necessarily all that it takes, but it can certainly take you a long way. And it certainly took the protagonist in that movie very far. And you know what, Dan?

Dan:                             02:09                What?

Mel:                             02:09                I don't know if this was planned or not, but that basically hands us a heuristic on a silver platter right now.

Dan:                             02:16                Boom!

Mel:                             02:17                I'm sure you weren't thinking about this at all, but it reminds me very much of the authority bias.

Eric Cartman:                02:21                I'm a cop and you will respect my authority.

Dan:                             02:29                It's one of those biases that I can't believe that we've gotten to this episode and we haven't yet discussed it. So great, we've got plenty of content to get through.

Dan:                             02:39                I know. It's everywhere and it's a juicy one. So I'm also excited to dive into this. So where should we begin?

Mel:                             02:44                With the definition, obviously.

Dan:                             02:45                Well, you're the doctor and I'm not going to argue with that. So let's do it.

Mel:                             02:49                Let me use my authority to provide you with the definition. Authority bias is the human tendency to attribute greater authority and knowledge to persons of perceived authority. And that authority can be achieved through fame, power, position, status, wealth, qualifications or even dress, as you saw in Catch Me If You Can. As simple as a pilot's hat, wasn't it?

Dan:                             03:10                Yeah, that's all you need. It's not all you need, you're right, but it's about 80% of what you need to be able to fly a plane, is the correct outfit.

Mel:                             03:17                And the ability to just deceive people and not care.

Dan:                             03:20                You've got to have the swag and it just seems that movie is like, is a classic example of people just not wanting to challenge authority. If somebody with a badge and uniform tells me to do something, then I should probably do it.

Mel:                             03:31                Yeah. There are probably some bad examples of, throughout human history, of where that has led people astray.

Dan:                             03:39                Yeah. And I guess there could be a whole dark side that this podcast could go down about regular people doing terrible things in war times, just because somebody in a uniform told them to. But we're going to not really spend much time on that and instead keep it easy breezy, if that's all right with you?

Mel:                             03:53                I like to keep things easy breezy, but what you do mention in that the dark side of human history in that sense is relevant to what we're talking about, because a lot of what we're going to talk about today has its origins in early social psychology research. And a lot of the real good stuff that we have today, that you would learn in Intro to Social Psychology, comes from the 1950s and 1960s after some particularly dark moments in human history.

Mel:                             04:20                So, if anybody has taken Introduction to Social Psychology or any social psychology course, there are probably three names that you will be pretty familiar with. The first would be Solomon Asch. And I believe we talked about Asch and the conformity study when we talked about social proof.

Dan:                             04:35                I believe you're correct.

Mel:                             04:37                And check the archives for that one. And people would also probably be familiar with the name Zimbardo and the prison experiment. And that's a popular one too. It's been popularized in movies recently as well. Today, we're going to talk about the third name that I put in that group of influential social psychologists, which is the name Stanley Milgram. Have you heard of Milgram, Dan?

Dan:                             05:03                Stanmo? Absolutely.

Mel:                             05:03                Everybody's heard of Milgram.

Dan:                             05:03                But, for those listening that haven't, why don't you bring us all up to speed?

Speaker 4:                    05:06                It's a alive.

Mel:                             05:07                I certainly will. Milgram was involved in a series of studies, in fact, he was leading a series of studies that looked at people's natural tendencies to comply with authority, even when it went against their moral compass. So people might be familiar with this, and I'll just give a brief overview of his research, but he was the one who was leading these studies that were about getting ordinary people to administer electric shocks to actors, but obviously, the person administering the shock didn't know that they were actors. And, it was under the guise of, You're participating in this experiment and your job is to be the teacher. And there's going to be somebody in another room. You can't see them. You'll be able to hear them, though. But they're the learner. And your job is to teach them by administering a punishment every time they make a mistake. And that punishment is going to be in the form of an electric shock.

Mel:                             06:05                "So you just got to press this button here and the person in the other room is going to get an electric shock. And they're going to know that they got it wrong and that they need to improve and, basically, step up the game. Right? As they go, the more mistakes they make, as well, the more severe the electric shock is going to get. But don't worry about that. Your job is to just keep administering those electric shocks as they keep making mistakes."

Mel:                             06:25                And what happened was that at the beginning of the experiment, pretty much all the participants would go along and administer these mild electric shocks to the not-real people in the other room. And it would get to a point. They'd get some feedback. So they were able to hear the person in the other room expressing some pain or discomfort, obviously, in response to the shock. So, if you imagine yourself being there and administering the shock to somebody and then hearing the feedback, you're probably going to start questioning after a little while and go, "Is this really the right thing for me to be doing? And when they did express some concern about, "Should I keep going?", they were told very sternly by Milgram or that the experimenter to, "Please continue. Carry on. This is fine. This is part of the project,." At which point, the participant would typically continue to administer those shocks to such a severe level, that 65% of all the participants administered the highest possible dose of 450 volts, which they believed was causing quite significant suffering to the other person.

Dan:                             07:35                This is wild, because I imagine this is one of those classic things where if you ask people in a completely cold state, "Here's how the experiment's going to work. I'm going to tell you to keep zapping the person every time they get the question wrong. And you're going to hear them screaming for their life." Would you keep going or would you stop? And I'm sure most people would say, "Oh no, of course, I'd stop. I'm not a sick psychopath. Why would I keep electrocuting somebody I could hear screaming from the room next door?" But what the experiment showed, if you just said 65%. So, basically, two thirds of people kept going, just because a dude in a lab coat with a clipboard said, "No, please continue. This is correct. Everything's going how it's meant to be going."

Mel:                             08:08                But you just touched on something there that was really key. That the guy in a lab coat with the clipboard was actually crucial to the experiment. And when they actually changed that, partway through the experiment, there was some variations where they actually just said, "The lead guy's got to step out for a minute." And they just replaced him with an ordinary person in jeans and tee shirt, and people's compliance went way down. So that lab coat, whether it's that lab coat, whether it's the pilot's hat that Frank Abagnale wears in Catch Me If You Can, that is so important. So everybody get out to a costume shop and make yourself look important, whatever it takes to influence people.

Dan:                             08:43                It makes sense. Right? Because I think about where this has come from. And, you know I always like to take a deep historical evolutionary perspective on this. And I think about why would evolution favor a respect or an obedience of authority? Evolution only favors positive attributes, so why on earth would it do that? And so one thing that I've considered is that it often makes sense to respect or be subservient to authority, because the people in authority are usually in a better position to be able to allocate you things you need to survive. So the authority figures might be able to give you food or water or shelter that you wouldn't be able to get if you just decided to challenge them at every moment. And I think on a more broad sense that having most people in society willing to obey authority, or at least adhere to authority makes it much easier to cooperate, to trade, to build societies than if everybody's just trying to burn shit down and you basically have anarchy and pirates running the show, which makes it tough.

Dan:                             09:42                So I think that there is this natural biological incentive for respecting authority. And then we layer onto that the fact that in society, everywhere you turn, from the moment you're born, you are being educated that good and positive behavior is behavior that respects and adheres to authority, whether that comes from parents, or elders, or school, or politics, or military or religion. Everywhere you go, you have a boss, and your boss has a boss, and your boss's boss has a boss. And if everybody just keeps you in line, everything's going to be sweet.

Mel:                             10:14                Yeah. And I think that's really the key, that from a very early age, from our earliest age, we are actually reliant on authority figures. Right? To guide us, to tell us where to go, to fill in the gaps when there's information that we don't have about how to act in the world. So from a very young age, we are hardwired to follow authority figures. And then it's only, maybe, as we get older that we start to develop, maybe in our teenage, adolescent years that we start to develop this need to actually say, "You know what? I think I've got enough information now. I want to make my own decisions. I want to be accountable. I want to be responsible for my own actions." But like you said, it develops as we go and then our social hierarchy is completely catered towards that.

Dan:                             10:55                So we've got hundreds of millions of years' worth of evolution, plus all of our cultural imprinting, that means we really don't stand a chance when somebody comes on screen in a lab coat and tells us to use this particular toothpaste or chew this particular gum. And it seems that the dental industry are perhaps the ... Wonderful industry. I've got some great friends in the dental industry. But, they are big subscribers to the authority bias, because whether it's-

Speaker 5:                    11:17                This man is a dentist. So we can't show you his face on television. Morning, Rob.

Dan:                             11:22                Oral B showing the shirtless Rob, the dentist, from the back. Or the fact that [inaudible 00:11:27] around the world, has affiliations with various dental associations. They even have online education programs for dentists. They have clearly seen the benefits of partnering with the clear authorities in dental health care.

Dan:                             11:41                I think we see a similar thing as far back as the 1930s, when cigarette companies, believe it or not, were getting endorsements by doctors. And I'm looking at an ad from the 1930s now. It's a Lucky Strike ad. And the headline reads, "20,679 physicians say Luckies are less irritating." And it's basically an ad that, of all the cigarettes you can smoke, Lucky Strikes are the ones to go for. And there's a smiling, middle-aged doctor in a lab coat looking like one hell of an authority figure here. And, "If he's telling me to smoke Lucky Strikes, who am I to argue?"

Mel:                             12:15                Was the rationale there that they were less irritating?

Dan:                             12:17                Yeah.

Mel:                             12:18                The cigarettes or the people smoking them?

Dan:                             12:20                Well, maybe both. And I also liked that 20,679 physicians say that. I don't know how many they surveyed. There might've been another million that said, "You've got to be kidding me. These are killing you." But, it's hard to argue with a guy in a lab coat is the first key lesson from today.

Mel:                             12:35                It's interesting, there's so many examples of this out there. Like any time a celebrity's used to endorse a product, the company's, basically, trying to leverage that person's authority, that person's fame or that person's status. And, George Clooney promoting the espresso is a perfect example of that. I'm sure you could flag off many more. Or, all the celebrities who endorse perfumes. Right?

Dan:                             12:58                Yeah. George Clooney as a human looks, pretty suave and sophisticated, so you would get why they would want him promoting suave and sophisticated coffee. But, I think it's really interesting when they have characters from TV shows, like people from Big Bang Theory promoting computers, where it's not even a real person. It's a character, but the character is enough to convey the authority that, "This nerd from Big Bang Theory must know about computers, because that's what I know them as."

Mel:                             13:23                I think this is a big criteria for me to distinguish. That whether a person actually has authority or whether it's perceived authority is really critical. When a person does have authority ... If a person really is a dentist and they know a lot about brushing your teeth and what's good for dental hygiene, then it makes sense to listen to them. I don't think that's necessarily a bias. That's just making a good decision based on good evidence. But when you've got somebody like a character, a make-believe person who doesn't actually have any experience in computers and is clearly being told, "Could you please ... " Or be paid, actually. "Could you please say this and we will pay you X number of dollars." Then, that's where the authority bias comes in, because it's the perception of authority that is influencing people, rather than any actual evidence itself.

Dan:                             14:11                Yeah. So, I'm going to be careful I don't, I don't trigger you here, because there's lots of safe spaces we can go. We can talk about Heart Foundation [inaudible 00:14:16] and all sorts of other things. But, I'm tempted to just take a little wander into the world of social media and say, it's tough today to determine in many instances where somebody is a real authority and where they are a manufactured or artificial authority. And I'm sure in your space, psychology and wellbeing, there are plenty of people out there who may be actually are authorities or maybe are just authorities at looking like authorities.

Mel:                             14:43                100%. And I think the lines between who's an expert and who's not used to be a lot clearer. But, like you say, with social media, but not just social media, the access that people have to even be able to, say, publish their own book. Right? Publishing a book used to be an exclusive right of people who were invited by a publishing company, based on their expertise, to write about a particular topic. But now anybody can self-publish and make money, essentially, or sell copies of something. And people then tend to believe that they're an expert in the area, even though they may not have any qualification at all, or any experience relevant to that.

Dan:                             15:22                I guess their authority becomes their qualification.

Mel:                             15:25                Did I do a good job of not getting too triggered there?

Dan:                             15:27                That was very good.

Mel:                             15:28                Thanks.

Dan:                             15:29                All right. So, look, I think as far as biases go, this is a pretty straightforward one. What we know is that people are more likely to take advice or take instruction from a perceived or authority figure. I guess, from a brand perspective ... We don't need to overcook this, but there are a few interesting and, maybe obvious, but I still think interesting things that brands can do with this. The first is to bask in the reflected glory of other authority figures. So we see this across the board, whether that is a celebrity endorser who aligns with actually what you're trying to do, or it might be an organization, like we spoke about the Australian Dental Association, the Heart Foundation, [inaudible 00:16:04] or even looking at something overseas where ... Nike, obviously, wanting to cement or defend their position as a leading provider of athletic apparel in the world have just signed a billion-dollar, eight-year deal with the NBA to be the official maker of uniforms for the NBA, because clearly if they're making the uniforms for the NBA players, they must be the leading authority on that.

Dan:                             16:26                So number one thing to do is to, bask in the reflected glory of somebody else's authority who can speak on your behalf and lend you some credibility that you otherwise might not have.

Mel:                             16:35                Makes sense.

Dan:                             16:36                That is not why I have you on the show, at all.

Mel:                             16:37                Mm (affirmative).

Dan:                             16:38                It might be a happy coincidence, Dr. Mel.

Mel:                             16:42                I don't feel used. That's fun.

Dan:                             16:44                No. You have feel leveraged.

Dan:                             16:48                The second thing to consider is ... Maybe it's a longer-term approach. Right? Because when you're buying or renting somebody else's authority, you can do that in a short period of time. The second thing to consider is becoming an authority figure oneself. And this is usually a much longer, much deeper commitment. If we go back to the episode on the mere exposure effect, the idea that just repeated exposure over time builds trust, builds safety, builds familiarity.

Dan:                             17:13                And if you are going to become an authority, figure out for yourself, building up your capabilities, your expertise and the familiarity with which people see you associated with the thing you're trying to be an authority for, is something to work on building over time. And the third thing I think brands can do, and this is slightly tangential, but is to think about the medium as the authority. And so there's this idea that you can do things in outdoor advertising and TV advertising that you can't do through digital-only channels. And I say this as a guy who was born and raised building an agency around digital channels. But, when you are making a big commitment on a big screen to a lot of people, it says, "We're a large company. We can afford to be on television. We're going to be here next week and the week after that." And it's often hard to convey that same authority just using hyper-targeted things like email and social media.

Mel:                             18:03                It's funny, isn't it? That idea that TV can become the authority figure, but Facebook has not got that at all. Just because anybody can do it, it doesn't cost a thing.

Dan:                             18:13                Exactly. The fact that it's democratized. From a business perspective, it's amazing for Facebook, because most of their customers are small businesses. So they're a very robust, very resilient business model, but they do miss out on the flashiness and the authority that you can get from those traditional media channels. What about for the poor people of the world? Just trying to not get mistaken by a guy in a captain's hat?

Mel:                             18:37                Yeah. Well, I think the thing here for me is about whether the authority figure has gained their authority through evidence or through eminence. Right? And what I mean by that is, if you take a step back and question where that person's authority has come from, have they earned it through something worthy of actually being a spokesperson for that topic? Or are they just a well-known famous person? In which case, what they say about anything may not necessarily be grounded in actual evidence or in actual research. So, obviously, I'm going to say, "Hey, listen to the people who have done the research, who have the facts, who have the qualifications."

Mel:                             19:14                And as we said before, it's very difficult to always know the difference in today's day and age, where there is so many people out there who are experts, but they're experts based on eminence and having this acquired status, rather than actually having the evidence behind it. So in that sense, my advice to people is to say, "Why do I trust this person's opinion?" Right? What's behind it?

Mel:                             19:37                The other thing that I mentioned just for ordinary people is something that actually Milgram came up with. And I love it when the people who actually named the biases then come up with their own hacks for it. That's my favorite thing. We don't have to do the work. But, Milgram in the 1970s, talked about introducing the idea of agency theory, which might mean something different in your world. But in the world of psychology, agency theory says people will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. So, once people can remind themselves that, "Actually the consequences of this decision are mine. I'm going to have to deal with the fallout or the benefit of this either way." Then you become more likely to question what you're basing your decision on, and to be more comfortable making your own decision and less likely to actually comply with the authority figure.

Dan:                             20:30                It's all on you. You got this, Mel.

Mel:                             20:32                You got this too, Dan.

Dan:                             20:33                Awesome! All right. So authority bias. I reckon that's a wrap. Can we just hit that textbook definition one more time? Just for those playing along at home.

Mel:                             20:41                Yeah. So authority bias is the tendency that we as humans have to attribute greater authority and knowledge to persons who we perceive have some level of authority.

Dan:                             20:50                And the things we can do about this as brands are to, number one, borrow or rent some authority by attaching yourselves to people, organizations or other brands that carry the authority that you want. The second thing we can look at doing is building our own authority, slowly over time. And looking at doing that through both the evidence and the eminence. Is that right, Dr. Mel?

Mel:                             21:11                Very good. How catchy is that?

Dan:                             21:12                And the third thing is to consider our media choices and where the medium itself can actually be the authority, by going big or going home. And for peeps?

Mel:                             21:21                And for peeps. So the first one is about questioning whether the authority figure actually has authority, or whether you're just perceiving that they have all authority. And if you can tell the difference between the two, then you're in a good place, because we want to trust the experts and we want to be cautious about the pseudo experts, wherever you are. And the second thing is about reminding yourself that you actually have agency and you are in control of the outcomes, not the authority figure or the perceived authority figure who you're following.

Dan:                             21:51                That's right. Like Adam Sandler said, "You can do it."

Mel:                             21:54                I can't wait to hear what you're going to watch next weekend.

Dan:                             21:57                Hopefully it lines up with whatever our next bias is going to be. I think that's all-

Mel:                             22:00                Wouldn't that be wonderful!

Dan:                             22:02                ... all for today. If you guys want to find us, we're on all the normal social media places where ... What's your handle, Dr. Mel?

Mel:                             22:09                @drmelw. The "doctor" is how you know that I'm an expert and authority figure.

Dan:                             22:12                Nice. And I'm just a lowly @danmonheit. No doctor. But, hey, I'm still good for advice, so hit me up.

Mel:                             22:18                And that's how you know the difference.

Dan:                             22:21                [inaudible 00:22:21] I will see you next time.

Mel:                             22:22                Bye.