A few days ago I posted my first poll, examining whether Phil ‘Bad Astronomer’ Plait and I looked identical (here). The results are in…
My thanks to everyone who voted. 30% of you went with the ‘identical twin’ hypothesis, and 50% admitted that there was indeed a strong similarity. So, it’s official, we do look alike.
I also asked people which of us was better looking. Obviously, I stacked the deck in my favour because the image of me on the front page of the blog would be likely to cause a ‘familiarity effect’ (the more you see it, the more you like it -thus the whole of the advertising industry). Anyway, even with this uneven playing field, 13% of you went with Phil and 6% voted for me. As a professional social scientist, the explanation for this finding is obvious. The new polling software has a bug in it.
Your thoughts?
Tags: plait
January 30, 2009 at 1:44 am |
Was there an option to choose, for a “strong similarity”? don’t remember that.
I chose: “There is some similarity, I have to admit it.” I chose that as a default. At the time I though that that choice was the closest to accurate, but since the only similarities were superficial, so my choice was pretty superficial too!
January 30, 2009 at 7:34 am |
Aww Richard, your face has an endearing quality of course, but vanity does not
January 30, 2009 at 10:19 am |
Actually – ‘the more you see it, the more you like it’ – did you consider that in fact it is true, because Dr Phil Plait is more established a blogger and it’s entirely possible that most readers of this blog are familiar with his work too? So, it’s possible that Dr Plait is in fact ‘more seen’ than yourself, despite the YouTube videos?
January 30, 2009 at 10:26 pm |
But you also switched the names for the testing, mislabeling phil as richard and vice-verca. Couldn’t that affect the testing too? Especially for people who have seen neither of you before?
By the way, I think you’re the better looking. Hmmm… But is that because of the “the more you see it the more you like it” theory?
January 31, 2009 at 1:57 am |
Yes, that’s true, Yumerin. Bit of a flawed experiment then?
February 4, 2009 at 6:19 pm |
Podblack: only for those entirely devoid of a sense of humour. The mis-labelling was clearly a joke, and the ‘experiment’ had, for me at least, all the hallmarks of being tongue-in-cheek. It seems very unlikely that someone with the professional reputation of Wiseman would actually care whether he’s better-looking that someone else, particularly as he ended with what I believe is called ‘a punchline’.