October 2009

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — Zakary L. Tormala's research flies in the face of logic. If you’re an expert and make your points with confidence, people will be far more convinced than if you sound uncertain. Right?

Well, no — at least not when it comes to consumers, the associate professor of marketing discovered in research he did with Stanford Graduate School of Business doctoral candidate Uma R. Karmarkar.

"Our key finding," Tormala said, "is that although non-experts can become more persuasive by expressing high certainty about their opinions, experts can become more persuasive when they express some degree of uncertainty. Across several studies, we found that expert sources gained interest and influence by expressing minor doubts about their own opinion."