For pundits, it's better to be confident than correct

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/wsu-fpi052413.php

Public release date: 28-May-2013
Contact: Eric Sorensen
Washington State University

Twitter analysis shows how 'yelling' attracts followers

PULLMAN, Wash. - It would be nice to think the pundits we see yelling on TV and squawking on Twitter are right all the time. It turns out they're wrong more often than they are right.

Now two Washington State University economics students have demonstrated that it simply doesn't pay as much for a pundit to be accurate as it does to be confident. It's one thing to be a good pundit, but another to be popular.

"In a perfect world, you want to be accurate and confident," says Jadrian Wooten. "If you had to pick, being confident will get you more followers, get you more demand."

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Wooten and Smith looked at both professional pundits - celebrities with verified Twitter accounts - and amateurs claiming some sports expertise. Both were worse at predicting than the 50-50 odds of a coin toss. Professionals were right 47 percent of the time, a hair better than the 45 percent accuracy of amateurs.

But the professionals were more confident, scoring a .480 confidence rating to the amateurs' .313.

And confidence pays - far better than accuracy.

If a professional pundit accurately predicted every game of the baseball playoffs and series, Wooten and Smith estimated his or her Twitter following would increase 3.4 percent. An amateur would get 7.3 percent more followers.

But a professional whose confidence knows no bounds would increase his or her following by nearly 17 percent and an amateur would see a nearly 20 percent rise in followers.

The outlier of the field could be Nate Silver, the statistician and New York Times political blogger. He's both cautious and accurate. But owing in large part to his correctly calling all 50 states in the recent presidential election, he's popular.

By and large, say Smith and Wooten, pundits get a better audience through confidence and the excitement it generates.

"There is some psychological literature on the idea that people hate uncertainty," says Smith. "The fact that people don't like uncertainty would suggest that they don't like the idea of a Nate Silver sort of person standing up there and saying, 'I'm only 90 percent sure.'"