The Big Question: Why Are Round Numbers So Powerful?

(light piano music)

Hal Weitzman: Big, round numbers exert a huge influence on our lives. Round numbers mold our expectations and shape our behavior. From the price you pay for your house or the salary you negotiate with your employer to the effort that marathon runners put into their finishing times, or professional baseball players into their batting averages. So why are round numbers so powerful, and how can you use them to your advantage?

Welcome to The Big Question, the monthly video series from Capital Ideas at Chicago Booth. I’m Hal Weitzman, and with me to discuss the issue is an expert panel.

Nicholas Epley is the John Templeton Keller Professor of Behavioral Science at Chicago Booth. He conducts research on the experimental study of social cognition, perspective taking, and intuitive human judgment, and he’s the author of Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want.

George Wu is a professor of behavioral science at Chicago Booth. A former analyst at Procter & Gamble, he is an expert on the psychology of individual, managerial, and organizational decision-making, decision analysis, and cognitive biases in bargaining and negotiation.

And Devin Pope is an associate professor of behavioral science and the Robert King Steel Faculty Fellow at Chicago Booth. He studies a variety of topics at the intersection of economics and psychology, including the dynamics of racial-biased used-car auctions and college admissions.

Panel, welcome to The Big Question. Devin Pope, let me start with you because your research is all about these round numbers and the power they have to shape behavior. Tell us about some of your findings.

Devin G. Pope: Yeah, so we oftentimes think of people, that people should consider numbers to be some continuous metric that we can use in transactions and in lots of economic markets, but a casual look at a lot of markets suggests that numbers aren’t this continuous metric that people use.

So one obvious example is stores will set prices at $2.99 or $5.99, but it goes a lot beyond this as well. So in research that I’ve done with various coauthors, we show, for example, that cars, when they sell . . . when cars have 99,000 miles on them, or 79,000 miles on them, they sell a lot better than when they pass over a 10,000-mile threshold. So 100,000 miles or 80,000 miles. So you can get about $200 more for your car if you sell it right before that threshold.

Similarly in college admissions, you find that individuals are way more likely to retake the SAT if they fell just short of a round number. So if you got a 1290, you’re going to be a lot more likely to retake than if you got a 1300.

Hal Weitzman: Presumably in that case, they’re retaking because the admissions staff at the university actually care about that threshold.

Devin G. Pope: Yeah, exactly. So one interesting thing is: Is this about the people themselves and they care within themselves, or are they just worried about what other people are gonna care? So who’s biased here, right? Who cares about these round-number cutoffs?

And I think in different settings, it’s different people. Work that George and I have done together look at marathon runners and show that they care about ending a marathon just under a round number. So they’d really like to finish in a sub-4-hour marathon, for example. And this is an example of one where it’s probably more about them caring themselves, although it also could be about telling your buddy when you get to work the next day that you ran that 3:58 marathon.

Hal Weitzman: Right, it’s under the 4-hour mark, which is also important. Tell us also just briefly about your baseball research.

Devin G. Pope: Yeah, so baseball players, and sports in general, I think, is definitely not immune to caring about numbers. So one example is that baseball players will oftentimes go through great lengths at the end of the season in order to finish with a batting average that hits a .300, for example, rather than end at .299. So they might sit out their last game or they might do other things in order to make sure they achieve that .300 benchmark.

Hal Weitzman: OK, so very powerful forces that kind of shape behavior across the board, and we haven’t even talked about money, salaries, and house prices, which we’ll come to.

George, why are these round numbers so powerful? I mean, there’s something almost inefficient in the way you talk about . . . The market, if left to itself, would not settle necessarily at a round number. So what’s going on there?

George Wu: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things. It’s that, first of all, round numbers are natural things for people to gravitate to. I mean, in our study, about 60 percent or actually about 50 percent of runners choose a goal of running 3:30, or 4 hours, or 4:30, or another similarly round number.

So in one way, I think that the idea is that people gravitate to these round numbers for one reason or another. But the second is that there’s nothing special per se about round numbers. What’s special about round numbers is that they tend to be more likely to be chosen as reference points, and reference points change how people evaluate outcomes.

But once people pick a number, whether that’s a round number or not a round number, that changes whether people look at behavior below or above that reference point as a success and failure.

Hal Weitzman: OK, but they’re more likely to choose that round number in the first place?

George Wu: They’re more likely to choose that. But if you chose 4:05, maybe that would act similarly to 4 hours. It’s just that people are much more likely to choose 4 hours.

Hal Weitzman: OK, Nick Epley, let me bring you in. Do you have a view on why these round numbers are so powerful?

Nicholas Epley: Well, lurking underneath these effects are a number of different effects that differ in what’s going on in our brains. So some of the work that Devin just talked about, you have numbers that are acting as goals. You try to run a 4-minute marathon, but numbers are—

George Wu: Four hour.

Nicholas Epley: Huh? Four hour!

Hal Weitzman: A 4-minute marathon would be very impressive.

Nicholas Epley: Four-minute mile, I was thinking, I was thinking of Devin running a marathon.

(panelists laughing)

Hal Weitzman: He is tall.

Nicholas Epley: He’s a long-legged man, yes.

(panelists laughing)

They serve as two things. One is they serve as goals that you can work toward, but the other is that numbers provide information. And so if you’re trying to think, what’s the value of a car, for instance, you might think about what the value of the last year’s model was on this car to have some sense about what this year’s new model might cost. Those aren’t necessarily round numbers, but they provide some information and they tend to gravitate your judgment toward that number.

So you’ve got these two competing mechanisms going on I think that are quite distinct. One are goals serving as a motivational reference point, something you’re trying to achieve behaviorally. The other is that they’re providing information that affect how you think about a problem.

Hal Weitzman: OK.

George Wu: And if I could add something. I think the information is different in different kinds of contexts.

So say in something like negotiation, if you use a round number, you’re kind of inviting people to make a concession, or you’re saying that, something around this is kind of where I’m starting. But it’s meant to be purposely vague. In some ways it’s a soft way of entertaining a counteroffer and things like that. I think people largely construe it that way, whereas if you say something that, my first offer is $11.15, presumably that’s meant to infer that, or I want Nick to infer that there’s some meaning for that. There’s some specificity. I’m less likely to budge from that particular number. And indeed that’s how people react.

Hal Weitzman: That’s interesting. So I wanna come more to the strategy and how we use them to . . . but you’re suggesting there that a round number sort of is like a: well, more or less.

George Wu: Yeah, and in a lot of cases, it’s this gentle way.

I mean, I think in other kinds of situations, I think, it’s . . . that’s one sense in which, at least for negotiation, it’s meant to construe flexibility and things like that.

On the other hand, in other kinds of situations, I think it construes the opposite: inflexibility. So if you have an aspiration to be a millionaire or something like that, that’s a clear category—$995,000 isn’t in that category; $1.5 million is. And so the idea there is that presumably if people are going to move off of that number, they’re not gonna move to $990,000. There’s nothing that’s arbitrary about $1 million. It is arbitrary in some way, but it’s defined in a way that really sets up a specific category.

Hal Weitzman: Although $1 million is an arbitrary, it’s sort of an arbitrary figure. And in house prices, we see that very much. I will not pay more than $350,000 for this house, or whatever. And similarly, on the other side, I will not sell for less than $400,000, or whatever. Tell us about some of what you’ve found looking at house-price negotiations.

Devin G. Pope: Yeah, so you see a lot of clumping at these round numbers. So it’s very, very hard to sell a home for $510,000. It ends up that during the negotiation process, you end up at $500,000, even if your list price was $529,000 or $539,000, or something.

And yeah, so you see this in a lot of places. It’s just very hard. These round numbers just seem to attract people to them. And you end up at these, even though they are arbitrary. And it’s interesting if you move metric systems, right? The point is that these numbers really are arbitrary. So for example, in our car research, while we see drops in value for cars at 10,000-mile marks, if you move to Canada, where we also have data, then you see drops in value at the 10,000-kilometer marks, right? And no drops at the 10,000-mile mark. So it’s very arbitrary. It doesn’t fit, kind of, the economic models that we write down that would just predict smooth depreciation of value.

Hal Weitzman: Right. I wanted to pick up on something you started talking about earlier, George, because you’re an expert in goal setting. So tell us about: How is goal setting different from these round numbers? Is a goal sort of more likely to be a round number? Does it work better if it’s a round number?

George Wu: Yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, and Nick was getting at the fact that there are lots of things that are behind why round numbers are chosen, and why they’re effective, and things like that. I mean, I think one thing is that it’s clear that round numbers are more memorable.

I mean, if you chose 4 hours for a marathon or the idea is that you’re gonna lose 10 pounds this month or whatever, those are round numbers. You don’t forget those things. If you chose 11. The next . . . did I choose 11? Did I choose 12? Well, I have no idea.

So there’s something about the specificity that’s gonna contribute to you remembering it. So I think those are reasons that these things are likely to be powerful in a lot of ways. And the other thing, I think that because other numbers . . . even though, in some ways, maybe 11 pounds this month, maybe that’s really what I should be aiming at. The fact that 10 is a convenient number and things like that, but why not 11? If I can lose 11 pounds, that’s better than losing 10.

But the problem there is that losing weight requires work and dedication and lots of ups and downs. Once you’ve started at 11, you have a hard day. Now it’s 10. Now it’s 9. Now it’s 8. So those kinds of things get renegotiated a lot.

Hal Weitzman: Really? So if I say, I’m gonna lose 11 pounds, I’m more likely to slide than if I say I’m gonna lose 10 pounds?

George Wu: That’s a speculation, but I think that’s likely to be. Whereas the round numbers, in some sense, are because they are categories. If you go from 10, now it’s a hard day, what are you gonna do? You’re going to change it to 9. Not really, you’re gonna change it to 5. So I think that’s one reason why these things tend to be sticky in some way.

Hal Weitzman: Oh, I see, so because it would be a big change with a round number. So see as you’re speculating, let me push you a little bit. Do you think that would work . . . see how you get on. Would that work on the house price? If you said, well, I don’t wanna pay, more or less, anything more than roughly $400,000. Could you get pushed to $450,000?

Nicholas Epley: the data here suggests that a precise number in terms of value actually creates bigger anchoring effects. So this is where you get a little bit of a disconnect between the various mechanisms that produce these outcomes.

George Wu: Yeah.

Nicholas Epley: So George is right that if I’m trying to lose weight, I can remember that my goal was 10 pounds, and that’ll stick with me. But if I ask you, is my house worth more or less than $282,000.752, you’d say, well, a little more. Pretty nice house. It’s worth more than that. If I ask you, well, how much is it actually worth? You’re actually gonna give me a number closer to that precise value than if I said, is it worth $280,000?

Hal Weitzman: And what you’re describing is anchoring.

Nicholas Epley: That’s an anchoring phenomenon, right. And that cuts a little differently than these goal phenomena because the psychological process is different. So when I give you a precise number: Here’s my car. I believe it’s worth $11,112. You say, no, it’s not worth that. How much do you think it’s worth? You’ll give me a number closer to that because the information, the value was so precise, you had to think about, is it worth that exact amount? Well, that just calls them on lots of information that’s close to that number. Because it’s so precise, the information is likely to be closer to that number. And so your anchoring effect is likely to be bigger in that case.

But with a goal in terms of motivation, we’re dealing with a different set of mechanisms. You have to remember the goal for it to influence your judgment.You’re not talking about valuation here. You’re talking about effort, and for that it has to be top of mind. You have to be able to recall it. And so sometimes you can get interesting differences on the effect of some variable, say the roundness or the preciseness of a number, on behavior depending on what the mechanism is.

Hal Weitzman: OK, so we have anchors, goals, round numbers. Can you tie them all together? I mean, how do these . . . you said that they’re different sort of impulses, different psychological processes. How do they interact?

Nicholas Epley: How do they interact?

Hal Weitzman: I mean, for example, is a big round number a natural anchor, a natural kind of anchor? Does it work better as an anchor?

Nicholas Epley: That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that empirically. That’s the thing that when these kinds of questions come up, we would have to go to the data. We’d have to run an experiment. I don’t know the answer to that.

One way to think about this, if you’re just thinking about, how do you use this kind of information, is you have to think about what’s the variable you’re aiming toward? Is it a goal-directed kind of behavior—I’m trying to work harder at this—then you get one set of outcomes.

Round numbers seem to produce pretty strong goals that you’re more likely to work toward. Specific numbers might, might less—although, as George pointed out, that’s an empirical question there. We don’t know that for sure.

But in terms of valuation, where the question isn’t, how hard am I gonna work for something, but, what is something worth in terms of salary, or the value of a house, or a car. There you’re dealing with a very different kind of dependent variable, and there it’s known that precision produces bigger anchoring effects.

Hal Weitzman: OK.

George Wu: But I think something that’s interesting about goals is that there’s a little bit of both things in goals. And the one aspect of goals is it’s about expectation and it’s about a prediction about . . . I can ask you, how many pounds can you lift? How many times can you bench 150 pounds? And that’s an expectation question. And that’s the kind of question which is exactly amenable to these kinds of anchoring kinds of things.

On the other hand, there’s these extra things that are layered on once that particular number is actually formed as a reference point or as a goal or something of that sort. So that division is not exactly clean.

Hal Weitzman: To what extent did these effects depend on people being ignorant of the true value of things, their true ability to run. If you really track yourself, you would know how fast you could run a marathon. Maybe you could run it in 3:54. So you might be not pushing yourself as hard as you could.

So to what extent do all these effects—anchoring, goal setting, and the effect of round numbers—depend on people being somewhat ignorant of whatever the accurate value or their accurate ability might be?

Hal Weitzman: Devin, do you have anything on that?

Devin G. Pope: Yeah, I mean, I think Nick knows this the best. I think it’s in the anchoring literature. It’s going to be most effective in situations where you don’t have a clear idea of what the true value is.

Hal Weitzman: So does that mean they just don’t work if you have a sense of what the value is?

Devin G. Pope: I mean, they don’t work as well. If you know exactly—

Nicholas Epley: Let’s try this right now. Let’s try this right now. Are there more or less than 10 mugs sitting on the table in front of us? Don’t look.

Hal Weitzman: (laughing) There’s fewer.

Nicholas Epley: How many are there actually sitting on the table?

Hal Weitzman: There are three.

Nicholas Epley: There are three, yes. So in a case like that, you’re not gonna get anchoring effects because there’s certainty, right.

But most of the world isn’t certain like that. And in fact, our memories are faulty. We have hopes and aspirations, right? So when you’re running a marathon, what are you exactly going to run? Well, I’ve never run a marathon before—if you can’t tell, I’m not a marathon runner. And so I would really have no idea. So my range of plausible outcomes is really big. So I would be hugely affected by an anchoring effect, at least in terms of the number I might estimate.

Maybe George has run a lot, and so his range of plausibility is narrower. But even within that range, he’s gonna be affected by an anchor. And it could be big because his variability is smaller, but there’s almost always a little bit of uncertainty in almost any judgment. What’s a house worth? What salary should I receive for this job? How many papers am I gonna publish this year?

I mean, all of these things have some, you know, we have some sense about them, but there’s also a lot of wiggle room, and that’s where these external forces, these anchors, these reference points, that’s where they really affect our judgment.

Hal Weitzman: And do we know anything about what . . . do anchors work better if I tell you—take out the example of mugs on the table—I tell you a house is worth $400,000, but you do some research online. Is one more powerful than another? Is a human interaction more powerful than if you did your own research?

I’m thinking of the typical example where someone buys a used car, they look online, they actually go to the dealership, and there’s all sort of extra costs because of this and that and tax and license and whatever else—

Nicholas Epley: Yeah.

Hal Weitzman: and it ends up being much more expensive than the price they were kind of told it was gonna be.

Nicholas Epley: So here’s where the mechanisms of these effects really matter a lot. So one of the things that goes on, if I ask you to estimate the value of this, and you know that I am a mug collector, right? So I know what this is worth. And I say, is this more or less than $10? You know I’m a mug collector. You think, well, he probably knows something about the value of mugs. So I’m a pretty credible source, and so you might think, well, I don’t think I’d pay that much for it, but he thought it was in the ballpark of $10. So I’ll guess it’s close to that.

You’ve made an inference about the credibility of that anchor value. And then it affects your judgment. You give an actual estimate that’s closer to that value. So the credibility of the source really matters quite a bit on this. But the interesting thing about anchoring effects out in the world is that they show up even when the anchor value is just totally arbitrary.

If I pulled a number out of a hat, right? More or less than, you know . . . you just give me a number. You got a hat with numbers in it, which you always carry around. I pull a number out of it. It says 20. You’re gonna give a higher number there than if I pulled one out that said five.

So you even get anchoring effects when there’s no apparent information value in the anchor itself, but the effects are even stronger when you make an inference that maybe there’s some credibility to that number.

Hal Weitzman: OK. I want to turn to talking about the strategies that we can . . . how can we actually use these effects to our benefit?

Let’s start with round numbers. So what would you suggest . . . let’s say for, we referred earlier to salary negotiations, which is a big one. People have no idea how to handle those. What are kind of the things that round numbers . . . can you deprogram yourself from the lure of round numbers? Maybe say, I’ll take less than the $100,000 salary if I get something else, and that makes you a more attractive candidate, or what would your advice be?

Devin G. Pope: Yeah, so I think that the first step would be the fact that you can oftentimes just take advantage of the fact that other people have these biases, right? So if you’re an employer, and you’re deciding whether to offer someone a wage of $98,000 or $102,000, and you’re thinking about which one to do, and you’re kind of on the fence, there’s gonna be a clear difference in the value that they’re gonna see these numbers at, alright? Or one of my favorite examples is diamond dealers. So diamond dealers, if you look on the market for loose diamonds, there’s lots and lots of diamonds available that are 1 carat and 1.01 carat diamonds, where there’s only just a handful of 0.99 carat diamonds. They just don’t cut 0.99 carat diamonds because they know they don’t sell as well, right?

And so if you’re in one of these businesses that have customers that some of them are gonna be biased in this way, you’ve gotta make sure that you’re taking advantage of that.

Another example would be if you’re a college admissions officer. You might actually want to go look for the people that have a 1290 on the SAT, right? The other college admissions offices might be discounting them in certain ways, and those are the real steals, right? Find someone with a 1290 that has great letters of recommendations and other things. And that might be just the perfect arbitrage where you can go in and find someone that’s just that.

Hal Weitzman: And similarly, I suppose, if you were looking, if you’re going online, looking for a house to buy and your limit is a round number—$400,000—you might want to push it slightly higher because you’ll get a larger set.

Devin G. Pope: Yeah, absolutely, alright? Be willing to sell your house for $395k if that’s going to make someone very happy, right? Or be willing to sell your car before it hits 90,000 miles on it.

Hal Weitzman: OK, and similarly, I suppose if you were buying a house, you might be able to offer, let’s say, $305,000, sounds better, much, much better, than $299,000.

Devin G. Pope: Absolutely.

Hal Weitzman: OK, what about anchoring then? Is it possible to kind of deprogram yourself from this? Can you show yourself another arbitrary number and somehow bring yourself back down? Or how can—

Nicholas Epley: Yeah, so you can consider, why might this anchor value be wrong? That’s one thing that does, that will reduce the effect of an anchor. So somebody suggests that they think your position is worth $50,000. You can ask yourself, well, why might that value be wrong?

That’s one thing that you can do, but all of these are kind of small little wrinkles you might do. I think the important point from this research is that what comes out of this is an awareness that our intuitive judgments are driven by all kinds of factors that we wouldn’t necessarily want to be driven by. And so I think it hits home the point that if you’re gonna go into these situations where you’re doing valuation, you don’t wanna guess. You need to do your homework, right?

So figure out: what do people with your qualifications earn out on the market in terms of a salary? What does this car actually sell for out there in the world if you look at other sales prices? Look at comparable homes, not by the listing price, which is an arbitrary anchor value, but by features of the home that you might want. Do your additional homework so that you go in with facts rather than relying solely on your inferences, because when you rely solely on your inferences, you’re gonna be driven by these things that you might not want to be.

Hal Weitzman: OK, George, do you have a view on deprogramming yourself?

George Wu: Yeah, I mean, for some . . . let me just talk . . . One thing that I think a lot about is negotiation and anchoring effects in negotiation. These are very, very strong. And I think one of the sort of classic effects is that people are affected by the other side’s offer. So if Nick starts with a particular offer, $10 or $12 or whatever, is there’s two things: I’m more likely to be close to his offer, and therefore I’m gonna end up with basically a worst deal the more extreme he is. And that’s a very, very hard thing to react to.

So. And I think in that particular situation, which is something that a lot of people face, there’s a very clear bit of advice, which is that people have to think about what they want the deal to be before they let the other side open their mouth. And once they think about it after Nick basically makes an offer, I’m done. It’s over. I can’t get that out of my mind.

Hal Weitzman: OK, so this is critical because lots of people worry about this. So the answer is always to make the opening offer?

George Wu: Not necessarily. I mean—

Hal Weitzman: Because you set the anchor?

George Wu: I mean, it’s good if you make it . . . I mean, the problem there is you wanna make the opening offer if you know how to make it effectively. This a more narrow statement, which is if the other side is going to make . . . you know, in a lot of situations, one side is really kind of required to make the first offer. Nick’s selling something so he’s gonna start with a price. That makes sense. Now I can try to interject, but if I know that Nick is gonna start with something, then what I want to do is I have to think about the value or what I want the deal to end up at before I hear what he is offering.

Hal Weitzman: And adjust my counteroffer accordingly.

George Wu: That’s right. And if he blunders and comes up with a terrible first offer, I can take advantage of that. That would be great. On the other hand, if he does the smart thing and comes up with a really, really clever first offer that would throw me off, I know how to adjust. I know that I have to do the counterproductive thing or the thing that’s really counterintuitive to do, which is that, the more extreme he is, the more extreme I gotta be the other way. And nobody, that’s not something that anybody’s prepared to do on the fly.

So that’s a particular situation, where you have to understand exactly what it does, how you’re gonna react, and you have to do what Nick was saying, is do your homework and figure out where you wanna be ahead of time.

Hal Weitzman: And I suppose, I wonder if also, if you see, anchoring is something that is often quite obvious. Someone is trying to anchor you. If you see someone trying to do it, should you call them out? Or how did you arrive at that figure?

Nicholas Epley: Those are cases in which it’s likely to be ineffective because you’re saying, this person is pulling my leg, right? I don’t believe this to begin with.

Hal Weitzman: Well, but if it works coming out of a hat, I mean, it’s—

Nicholas Epley: Well, it works coming out of a hat because I asked you, how does this, is this value right or not? It’s not clear that the person’s trying to deceive you, right? So if it’s clear I’m trying to deceive you with the value of the mug, it wouldn’t have as big of an effect on your judgment.

Do you call somebody out on it? That’s a good question. Again, that’s an empirical question. I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know of any study that has looked in a negotiation context, for instance, where you say, look, you’re trying to lowball me with this offer. I’m not going to do that. I don’t know what the consequence of that is.

Hal Weitzman: Well, I wonder also because you say the way to arm yourself is with information. I know the salary is—.

Nicholas Epley: Yeah. Yeah.

Hal Weitzman: So how did you arrive at that figure, may I ask?

George Wu: Part of it gets at what, which is that, I mean, the problem in a lot of situations is I don’t know exactly what informational value an offer has. Sometimes it’s really pretty informative. People are fair. They come up with first offers that are reasonable. They know a lot more about what this antique is worth than me.

Other times, I’m in the marketplace in Morocco and things like that, and that’s a very, very different script.

But the problem is in some situations it’s clear that it’s informative. And in a lot of situations, it’s clear that it’s not. In most situations, it could be informative. It could not be. And at least one of the things that I suspect that this kind of question does is it basically tells you whether this number was pulled out of a hat or whether this number is something where, the reason I came up with this number is it’s based on this sale, this sale, and this sale, and this sale. So I know a lot. You should believe I’m credible.

Now, of course, those could be picked self-servingly, are likely be picked at the top of the market, things that are advantageous for me. Nevertheless, I’ve established some credibility.

Hal Weitzman: And you also said, to come back to round numbers, you said at the beginning that credibility will almost be reinforced if you have a very specific, I know I’m worth $58,323 dollars a year, based on these criteria, rather than about $60,000.

George Wu: Yeah, and one thing I think that people, and there are studies which show that weird, oddball numbers in negotiation help. I suspect that they’re not gonna work as effectively if you ask people, how did you come up with $58,323? I was told to come up with a crazy—

(panelists cross talk, laughing)

George Wu: I made that number up.

Hal Weitzman: Did I mention that I’m crazy?

George Wu: Yeah, and so, in that case, there is no reason why you came up with this incredibly ad hoc number. And I think, in that case, it will undermine the credibility that you have. But it’s, again, one of these things that if people understand that one of the things that they are inferring is something about credibility and they asked that question, then that actually gives them something that presumably is more reliable than their kind of automatic judgment.

Hal Weitzman: OK, well, on that note, our numbers are up. My thanks to our panel, Nick Epley, George Wu, and Devin Pope.

For more research, analysis, and commentary, visit us online at chicagobooth.edu/capideas, and join us again next time for another The Big Question.

Goodbye.

(light piano music)