The best way to win an argument? Shout louder than everyone else and people will simply assume you're right

Researchers analysed more than a billion tweets from pundits during American sporting events

Found that being confident makes you more popular than being right



The pundits and amateurs studied made a similar number of correct predictions, yet those who were 'louder' and more confident were seen to be more trustworthy and popular



Being confident and loud is the best way to win an argument - even if you are wrong, a new study suggests.

Researchers from Washington State University drew this conclusion after studying the activity of Twitter users. The more opinionated they were, the more influential and trustworthy they were perceived to be.



They analysed more than a billion tweets posted during various American sporting events, including the 2013 Super Bowl, to the test whether being accurate or being confident made Twitter users more popular.

Despite professional pundits and amateur fans making a similar amount of correct and incorrect predictions, the tweeters who 'yelled' louder were seen as more trustworthy and had more followers.



People who are 'loud' and confident on Twitter are more popular and influential, even if what they're tweeting is inaccurate, say researchers. The economic students behind the research developed a software program to analyse a billion tweets looking for words that were considered confident, such as 'destroy' and 'annihilate'

GET MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS A study by the Georgia Institute of Tech found that Twitter users who posted positive, easy-to-read messages that contained news and other factual information, gained 30 times more followers than grumpy, self-centred tweeters. They put together some tips for gaining new followers:

Don't talk about yourself: Informational content attracts followers at a rate 30 times higher than personal content. Users talk about themselves in 41 percent of their tweets on average. Be happy: Stay away from negative posts such as death, unemployment and poor health.

Use hashtags sparingly: Using too many hashtags puts people off. Researchers found that Twitter users with a high 'hashtag ratio' attracted less followers.

To test the theory, two economic students from the university studied the language used by sports pundits who often 'yell' for attention.

Jadrien Wooten and Ben Smith compared the tweets of professional pundits - celebrities with verified Twitter accounts - with amateur tweeters that claimed to have some sports expertise in their bio.

The pair then developed a software program to sort through more than a billion tweets looking for predictions for major sporting events in the US, such as the 2013 Super Bowl in February.

The program pulled out tweets with team names, nicknames and expressions commonly associated with predictions, such as 'beat' and 'win'.



Words like 'vanquish,' 'destroy' and 'annihilate' posted in Tweets were considered to be confident words.

The researchers used these confident words in place of being able to measure loudness online.



The researchers developed a software program and formula for analysing how confident tweets were. They compared this to how accurate the tweets were, how many tweets a user posted each year, how many people favorited their tweets and the number of followers each one had. From this they were able to find a mean average and compare professional and amateur tweeters to each other

The research found that the professionals were correct with their predictions 47 per cent of the time.



Whereas the amateurs made accurate predictions in 45 per cent of cases.



However, the professionals were more confident, scoring a .480 confidence rating compared to the amateurs' .313.



If a professional pundit accurately predicted every game of the baseball playoffs and series, the authors estimated his or her Twitter following would increase 3.4 per centr



While an amateur would get 7.3 per cent more followers.

A confident professional would increase his or her following by nearly 17 per cent, whereas a 'loud' amateur would get 20 per cent more followers.

More than a billion tweets were analysed during US sporting events, including the 2013 Super Bowl, so researchers could test whether being confident, or being accurate, was the key to Twitter popularity and influence. The study found that the 'louder' people tweeted, the more followers they gained despite only being able to correctly predict the scores in less than half of cases

The authors claim that this shows people are more willing to trust 'loud' amateurs, despite their supposed lack of authority on the subject, than 'loud' professionals.



Wooten said: 'In a perfect world, you want to be accurate and confident.

'But if you had to pick, being confident will get you more followers, get you more demand.

'They're trading away some of their accuracy.

''I might not be right all the time but I can yell louder than this other guy.'"

Smith and Wooten added that tweeters get a better audience through confidence and the excitement it generates.

Researchers Jadrian Wooten, left, and Ben Smith from Washington State University claim that this shows people are more willing to trust 'loud' amateurs, despite their supposed lack of authority on the subject, than 'loud' professionals

STUDY FINDS 40% OF TWEETS CONTAIN 'POINTLESS BABBLE'

A study by market research agency Pear Analytics found that almost 40 per cent of tweets contain 'pointless babble' such as ‘I’m eating a sandwich’. Almost as many tweets were purely ‘conversational’ - like a text message. And just 8.7 per cent of all tweets were deemed of ‘value’ with worthwhile news content. The remaining 9.6 per cent of tweets were classed as self promotion and spam.

Smith added: 'There is some psychological literature on the idea that people hate uncertainty.

'The fact that people don't like uncertainty would suggest that they don't like the idea of a person standing up there and saying, 'I'm only 90 percent sure.'"

Wooten concluded: 'I like to think of it like a roulette wheel.

'If you have somebody just placing bets, that person is kind of boring.



But if you have someone going, 'Oh, yeah! It's red!' and they are confident, that's the person that you are interested in.'

Smith originally wanted to test the accuracy of stock market pundits, based on tweets from CNBC host Jim Cramer, whom Wooten called 'the yelling genius that he thinks he is.'

Yet the pair realised that stock predictions don't have a set date in which a prediction comes true, and they were unable to prove when a pundit had been right or wrong.

