An audience rates a lecturer highly for an expressive, confident delivery even when the lecture has no real content.
In 1973 Naftulin, Ware and Donnelly hired an actor, billed him as Dr Myron L. Fox, and had him lecture on mathematical game theory as applied to physician education, in a talk built from double-talk, invented words and contradiction. Audiences of psychiatrists, psychologists and educators rated it favourably. Later studies of what Ware and Williams called educational seduction found that expressiveness raises ratings more than it raises learning.
In practice
- A university that promotes on student evaluations rewards the lecturer with the best jokes, whether or not her students pass the next course.
- A conference audience leaves a keynote enthused and, asked the next morning, cannot say what was claimed.
- Standing
- A demonstration with small audiences and no control group. The durable finding is the narrower one: delivery moves ratings more than it moves learning. Compare the seductive details effect.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- What works in learning, and what schools can and cannot change