It has not eaten you yet
by Paul Sonderegger
Paul Sonderegger
The Boston Globe recently ran a fascinating article titled “Easy = True”. The basic gist is that people prefer things that are easy to think about, to the point that if something is easy to understand, people are more likely to think it’s true. The implications of this are huge. Cognitive scientists studying this phenomenon have found that stocks of firms with easy-to-pronounce names perform better than the hard-to-pronounce ones, simple statements seem more believable when they rhyme, and easy-to-read forms make people more truthful when filling them out. These are all effects of “cognitive fluency.”
Two cognitive linguists, Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson hit on a similar idea a few years ago in their excellent, but little-known book, Relevance. The question that drove them was “Why does communication between people work most of the time but sometimes fail spectacularly? What kind of a system is that?” Their explanation for how language comprehension works fits with both research into how we think and into the physiology of the brain.
The key is relevance. In Sperber and Wilson’s theory, relevance breaks down into two things – effect and effort. All things equal, a piece of information will appear more relevant the greater the effect it has on your current thinking. And, all things equal, a piece of information will appear more relevant the less the effort required to get that effect.
Let me give you an example. If I tell you that a) Iceland is cold in the winter, b) Green tea is good for you, and c) Warren Buffet will give a free investment seminar in your town tomorrow, which one of these is most relevant? For most of us, it’s option C. The possibility of getting investment advice from one of the world’s greatest investors has a much greater effect on our thinking than facts about Iceland or green tea. But, if I tell you that ‘Warren Buffet will give a free investment seminar in your town tomorrow’ or ‘On the day after today, the man recognized as perhaps the greatest investor of all time will dispense investing advice with wisdom and wit in your town of residence’ – which of these is more relevant? The first, because the same basic message can be had for less effort.
Both relevance theory and cognitive fluency make the same basic argument about where these skills come from. The human mind is wired up to rapidly identify what matters most in our surrounding environment. And we prefer things that are familiar. As the psychologist Robert Zajonc used to say, “If it is familiar, it has not eaten you yet.”
All very interesting, but why should this matter to you? Anyone building BI or search applications to improve daily decisions has to take this idea very seriously. Relevance is in the eye of the beholder. And if it’s just too hard to get relevant information out of the app, people will dismiss it – not only as too difficult, but perhaps even as untrustworthy.
