The artful dodger

Todd Rogers

What happens when people try to "dodge" a question they would rather not answer by answering a different question? In four online studies using paid participants, we show that listeners can fail to detect dodges when speakers answer similar - but objectively incorrect - questions (the "artful dodge"), a detection failure that went hand-in-hand with a failure to rate dodgers more negatively. We propose that dodges go undetected because listeners' attention is not usually directed at a dodge detection goal (Is this person answering the question?) but rather towards a social evaluation goal (Do I like this person?). Listeners were not blind to all dodge attempts, however. Dodge detection increased when listeners' attention was diverted from social goals to determining the relevance of the speakers' answers (Study 1), when speakers answered egregiously dissimilar questions (Study 2), and...