Public Opinion & the "Anchoring Effect"

By Bill Furlow and Davilynn Furlow
Furlow Communications, LLC

A recent Atlantic Monthly article reminded us of the importance of telling your story on Day One of news coverage of any controversy or crisis.

Many times when bad news is about to break, clients or their lawyers will say to us, “Let’s wait and see what they write, and then we’ll respond the next day if we need to.” This is about like a basketball coach saying, “Let’s spot the other guys 30 points and see if we can catch up.”

Whatever the topic, opinions get formed the first time a person learns something about it. If Acme Industries is involved in a labor dispute but won’t speak to the media, the first day’s news coverage of the strike will be dominated by a union rep talking about unfair labor practices, low pay and Dickensian working conditions. The visuals will be of workers with picket signs that say, “Acme says ‘no’ to living wage.” The workers’ stories of children with no health care coverage will be impossible for Acme to erase from the minds of viewers and readers – regardless of the accuracy or fairness of those stories.

This is stuff we’ve preached for a long time, but The Atlantic story on estimating the number of Iraqis killed since the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein caused it to snap back into focus. The substance of the piece, human deaths, is extraordinarily important, but what caught our attention was the science behind how public opinion on such matters is formed.

While estimates of Iraqi dead have ranged from 81,020 to one million, the number that is most frequently cited and which sticks in many people’s minds is 600,000. The figure – actually 601,027 – comes from a 2006 study by researchers, mainly from Johns Hopkins University, published in the prominent British medical journal The Lancet.

A larger, more rigorous study conducted by the World Health Organization about the same time concluded The Lancet figure was four times too high. But who remembers that?

As the Atlantic article points out, “Though its compromises (in methodology) made it particularly unreliable, the Lancet study remains the most widely known. Its conclusions were the earliest and most shocking of the scientific estimates and thus generated enormous media attention. The more careful counts that followed prompted fewer and less prominent articles.”

We’ll leave that study there so as not to become bogged down in views of the Iraq war. The point is Johns Hopkins’ study became the benchmark for Iraqi deaths because it 1) was first, 2) contained a shocking and extremely precise figure and 3) came from a seemingly credible source.

Cognitive scientists call this the “anchoring effect,” the tendency to lock in on a number or fact we’ve heard or read, even if it later proves to be wrong.

When applied to news coverage, this phenomenon means if we don’t tell our story at the first opportunity, it’s going to be very hard to win the battle of public opinion.

We saw this last year with Bill’s work in Jena, Louisiana on the “Jena 6” case. Because the public officials in Jena admittedly did a poor job of telling their side of the story until the case had become a national cause celebre, it took tremendous effort just to begin to get readers and viewers to see that there was more to the story than had initially been presented in the media.

Conversely, while working with a couple of executives who quit their company and publicly alleged the withholding of millions of dollars of compensation, we were able to define the story and gain the upper hand by being the first mover. Our clients’ story was accepted as fact throughout their industry.

The “lawsuit filed” story is one in which companies often exercise self-destructive tendencies. The story generally is based on very damaging allegations contained in a lengthy complaint that is privileged and not subject to libel laws. After reading all the dastardly acts of which the defendant is accused, a reporter calls the company to get its side. But rather than respond, the company executives somehow take comfort in being able to say, “We can’t comment because it’s in litigation.”

The net effect, then, is to have an entire story published with great detail about the company’s purported sins with nothing to refute it. The public is left to assume, in light of credible-sounding allegations and the company’s refusal to talk, that the grievances are probably true. A later response by the company is unlikely to get much attention or be very effective.

Author Stephen P. Robbins, who writes about organizational behavior, says our minds give disproportionate emphasis to the first information they receive. “Initial impressions…carry undue weight relative to information received later,” he says.

And researchers at the University of Iowa have found that even when initial information is known to be incorrect, it retains a hold on our perceptions.

All of this is to say that when you’re facing controversy, bad news, media investigations or allegations such as those contained in lawsuits, it is imperative to tell your side of the story clearly, forcefully and graphically the first day. Like the basketball coach who tells his team not to shoot until the second half, to do otherwise is to tank the game.

Furlow Communications, LLC is a consulting firm specializing in crisis and strategic communications. See www.furlowcommunications.com for more details. Contact the Furlows at 877-300-2404 or at info@furlowcommunications.com.