Compellingness

Psychologists call emotional thinking “hot” cognition. It’s not a flattering term. People often think of emotions as something they are trying to turn off. But those quick emotional reactions do something that the logical brain couldn’t accomplish in three hours with a stack of spreadsheets. With endless possible targets for our attention, our feelings tell us “Pay attention over here!” You don’t have to decide what’s interesting. It’s just . . . interesting. When we apply a bit of conscious thought to this element of compellingness, we become more efficient at checking. By reflecting on why we find something compelling, we can understand what to look for in a source or claim, and we can separate trivial issues from dealbreakers.

Understanding exactly what you find compelling may take some reflection. Our feelings give us baseline information fast, but they do not file detailed reports. Consider an example from chapter 4, where we did a brief source investigation of the American College of Pediatricians. People we tested found that organization to be a compelling source—they had a positive, reassuring feeling about the website. It was ultimately the wrong feeling, but part of its “compellingness” was a gut feeling, or assessment, that this was some sort of large, reputable association of physicians that weighs in on lots of matters. We know this is what many people thought because if we took the same content and put it on a site named “Some Docs and a Laptop Who Post a Lot of Politically Inflammatory Content,” that feeling would disappear in a flash. What made the site compelling was the idea it was run by a well-known, large organization that cares about kids.

We’ve watched people find their way to the Wikipedia page on the organization. They read the first few lines and . . . gasp. There are the facts: the American College of Pediatricians has at most a few employees, only about five hundred members, and a budget less than a year’s tuition at some colleges. It’s immediately evident to these readers that the thing that made this site attractive—the idea that it was a big professional organization—is gone, and with it compellingness has sailed away.

For other people, however, it doesn’t immediately click. A Wikipedia page contains many details; which ones bear on the impression that made the source compelling? Should you focus on the organization’s membership or the names of its publications?

Over time, we’ve developed a helpful ten-second exercise to do before clicking over to Wikipedia. Ask yourself what is compelling about the source you’re looking at. Free associate. Think of nouns and adjectives. Maybe it’s “pediatricians,” “respected,” or “impartial.” Then head over to Wikipedia. Once you’ve highlighted what made the source compelling, the way the Wikipedia page undoes everything compelling about the source becomes more pronounced. Compellingness isn’t your shovel. But it tells you where to dig.

Fear not—we aren’t going to make you free associate for every claim or source you find while doom scrolling on your phone. But as you practice SIFT, especially at first, we encourage you to use your sense of compellingness to help identify how the quick context you build either intensifies or diminishes your initial reaction. If you find yourself overwhelmed with detail in a search, come back to the question of what originally drew you to the news item, video, or statistic. Has additional context changed your first reaction? You started out asking “Is this what I think it is?” Now that you know, is it more compelling or less?

That feeling of compellingness, implicated in so many bad decisions of the past, can, with a bit of practice, help you in the future.