Want to become a smart politician, read this...Khushdeep

A day before yesterday, in sorting PTI dispatches, I came across with a very interesting study by Todd Rogers and Michael Norton of Harvard University, which throws searchlight on mindset of a good politician while taking questions from journalists or common public.



It's known that good politicians are smooth talkers. Now, a new research has found that they easily evade answering tough questions by addressing similar questions during debates -- thanks to the limited attention capacity of listeners.



The study found that people typically listen to a speaker with the goal of forming an opinion of the person, but many a times they fall for accepting the person's response to a question even if the question goes unanswered.



"When you pay attention to it, communicators are often evading questions that are asked," said Todd Rogers, who is also a political psychologist at the Analyst Institute -- a group focused on understanding voter communication in the US. "Unless you are asked to pay attention to it, they can get away with it," Rogers told LiveScience.



To determine how they get away with it, the researchers conducted four separate experiments with four groups of people totalling 1,139 men and women averaging 44 years old. In three of the studies, participants watched a video of a mock political debate and then responded to an online survey. In the fourth study, participants listened to excerpts of a recording of a mock political debate and then responded to questions.



The results indicated that people are frequently unable to remember an initial question if a speaker answers a similar question. It was found that only 40 per cent of the listeners could remember the original "war on drugs" question, compared to 88 per cent of those who heard the "health care" question.



If the listeners couldn't remember the question correctly, the speaker was determined to have successfully dodged that question, satisfying viewers with an alternate, though similar, answer, the researchers said.

When the question and answer were very different, for example, the health care statement in response to a question about the war on terror, listeners were able to recognise the dodge and came away with a negative view of the speaker.



Debate viewers didn't notice the speaker dodging these similar questions unless they are specifically reminded of the question by placing it on the screen. Even when facing a dodge, participants could remember the original question 88 per cent of the time if it had been on the screen, compared to 39 per cent when it wasn't. Researchers believe this could be because our brainpower is usually focused on interpreting the speaker's social actions -- whether they think the person is honest or trustworthy -- that distracts them from recognising the dodge.



"As soon as we encounter a new person we analyse them socially," Roger said. "Because this activity stops us from fully engaging in the answer, it facilitates question dodging." This study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: applied.



And now what are you thinking, awake a good politician hidden in yourself right from this moment.