Here’s a provocative but revealing little quiz for ya:
For every $1 spent by the US government in 2022, how many cents went to military spending?
(I’m asking about 2022 because it’s the most recent year for which I could find data.)
Think about that for a moment, and come up with yer best guess.
I’ll tell you the answer in a second but really, the specifics are not all that interesting. What is interesting is that, if you’re American and maybe even if you’re not, your answer can expose you as being either Democrat or Republican, left or right.
The right answer by the way is 14.2 cents.
Like I said, that’s not all that interesting. What’s more interesting:
Dems tend to guess US military spending is higher than Republicans guess.
Ok, maybe that’s not tremendously interesting either. Maybe that’s predictable.
So let me try again. Here’s the really interesting part:
If you don’t just ask people to guess, but instead you pay them to guess right, or you pay them to simply say, “Dang I don’t know,” then suddenly party bias shrinks by 80%.
In other words, put some live chips on the table, and suddenly, people’s beliefs change.
We know this because a professor at Northwestern, John Bullock, did the experiment. He found the result confirmed over a large number of participants and a large number of questions, involving topics like race, unemployment, and military deaths.
Curious, no? What’s going on?
I can’t say for sure, but I can imagine two options:
1. Maybe there’s extra thinking going on when money’s on the table. Maybe people take a moment to say, “Gee my gut says this, but let me take an extra second or two to think it over, since there’s real consequences to expressing my opinion.”
2. Maybe there’s extra thinking going on when money’s not on the table. Maybe people “know” the real answer, or at least their best guess at the real answer. But when there’s no consequences to guessing wrong, maybe people like to engage in some “extra thinking” — posturing or group identification — and that comes out as a more partisan guess.
Either way, the conclusion is, money gets you closer to the truth.
Of course, I’m really talking about business, not politics.
Prospects lie, or they embellish, or they just don’t think very hard about what you’re asking them. Not until there’s money on the table — their own money, which they just took out of their pocket, and which they are now considering sliding across the table to you.
Or maybe they won’t slide it across? Maybe they’ll just put it back in their pocket? Which brings me to a second little quiz:
Are you launching a new offer?
If you are, you can just put it out there, and see if the market buys. No doubt that will give you feedback. But it won’t be very detailed or granular feedback. It won’t tell you what, if anything, you can do to make more sales.
There might be a better way. If you’re launching a new offer, then hit reply. Tell me what your offer is. And I can tell you about this better way.