So What Was That All About?

Back in the day when this blog was a mass e-mail, I often included a photo of my dog.
I no longer have a dog, but here's a nice substitute.
This is Kona, my niece's lovely golden lab. She's lying in the shade with her ball.

My great thanks to everyone who took about fifteen minutes out of their busy lives to help me work something out.

The hypothesis I was testing with the survey questions these past ten weeks was this: People are more inclined to believe a description of a situation or fact when it is stated negatively. 

I was curious about what people think sounds truthful and authoritative. 

So, without really having any idea of what I was up to, I encouraged all my lovely readers to play along. And you did. Bless your hearts. 

There were ten questions, two in each of five different categories: Believability, Which One First, Who's Coming For Dinner, What's Your Line and True or False.

Every week, survey respondents were invited to choose between something positive and something negative in terms of whether they considered statements in the survey to be believable, something they would click first, something they would say themselves and something they thought true or false. In the most enigmatic category, respondents chose their dinner companions. 

Here are the results:

In Week One, almost 80% of respondents found it more believable that cycling would be the transportation of the future than that cyclists are entitled weenies. 

Positive wins.

In Week Two more than 70% of respondents said they would click on stories about local programs helping kids at risk before reading about auditor general findings of waste and mismanagement. 

Positive wins.

In Week Three more than 80% wanted to have dinner with the positive-sounding Doc, Happy, Bashful and Dopey. Sneezy may have been the deal-breaker in the other group, but Grumpy was the test dwarf. 

Positive wins.

Week Four saw a tighter race between the almost 65% of respondents who felt they could express some compassion for the millions of men throwing good money after bad on Ashley Madison and those who thought those men got what they deserved. 

Positive wins.

In Week Five, 76.5% wanted to first click the story about how British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan were helping Syrian refugees, leaving the balance to find out first how much this was all going to cost. 

Positive wins.

In Week Six, a full 78% of respondents believed that the Internet could very well be planting the seeds for a new global language. The balance considered the risks too high. 

Positive wins.

Week Seven showed that Spock, Scotty, Uhura and Chekov were the preferred dinner guests of 65% of respondents. Without being directly analogous to Grumpy, Sneezy and Sleepy, the Kirk, Bones and Sulu meal group was the "negative" set. 

Positive wins.

Week Eight saw a sharp downturn in respondent numbers, and the results may be invalid because of that. This was the first time more respondents - 60% - chose the negative over the positive, marvelling that two jerks should find one another, the bad driver and the punk cyclist, with the minority sticking to the higher ground of wishing we could all just get along. 

Negative wins.

To this point, my hypothesis had not weathered well. The responses displayed at least a strong preference for positive statements. For the last two questions, I went to the exact circumstances I was trying to assess. I found two statements made by real people and I asked survey respondents to say whether or not they thought the person was telling the truth. 

Week Nine's question was a quote from Terence Corcoran and his assessment of the notion of putting a price on carbon. Week Ten was a quote from David Suzuki describing positive environmental trends. Both statements used weasel words and half-facts to make their case. Neither was entirely true or false. Corcoran made his statements couched in negative terms (the Carbon Leap of Death...), Suzuki in positive (in my hometown...).

61% of respondents thought Corcoran was telling the truth.  33.33% thought Suzuki was. 

Negative wins.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen