Guides Not Gurus

Explaining Guides Learners Towards Perfect Patterns, Not Perfect Prediction

When learners explain to themselves as they encounter new information, they recruit a suite of processes that influence subsequent learning. One consequence is that learners are more likely to discover exceptionless rules that underlie what they are trying to explain. Here we investigate what it is about exceptionless rules that satisfies the demands of explanation. Are exceptions unwelcome bec...

Using Privileged Information to Manipulate Markets: Insiders, Gurus, and Credibility*

Access to private information is shown to generate both the incentives and the ability to manipulate asset markets through strategically distorted announcements. The fact that privileged information is noisy interferes with the public's attempts to learn whether such announcements are honest; it allows opportunistic individuals to manipulate prices repeatedly, without ever being fully found out...

Humour and Laughter in the Public Lectures of Management Gurus

Ssing Privileged Information to Manipulate Markets: Insiders, Gurus, and Credibility

We show how an insider, a financial journalist, or a "guru" can repeatedly manipulate an asset market to his own benefit, by making strategically distorted announencements or predictions. We also analyze the extent to which the public's attempt to learn over time whether or not this informed agent can be trusted may limit, in the long run, his influence on the market. In solving the model, we e...

Charisma, status, and gender in groups with and without gurus.

A number of studies have noted that small religious groups with charismatic leaders seem to have different gender dynamics than do groups without. We argue that the presence of such a leader changes what charisma “means” in such a group. Without such a leader, strong personalities may appear charismatic and lead to positions of high status—and such dynamics historically have tended to be associ...