
--Some ancient Greek dude named Archilochus
Research suggests that some people are "hedgehogs" and others are "foxes." This dichotomy came up recently in a Newsweek article about political pundits. Inspired by the ancient Greek poet, and further developed by philosopher Isaiah Berlin, the division of the world into people who think like "foxes" versus "hedgehogs" is a handy concept.
So how you do spot a "hedgehog" or a "fox" in the wild?
According to the article, hedgehogs know "one big thing." They "apply that one thing everywhere, express supreme confidence in their forecasts, dismiss opposing views and are drawn to top-down arguments deduced from that Big Idea."
Foxes, on the other hand, "know many things. They consider competing views, make bottom-up inductive arguments from an array of facts and doubt the power of Big Ideas."
"At one extreme, hedgehogs seek certainty and closure, dismiss information that undercuts their preconceptions and embrace evidence that reinforces them, in what is called 'belief defense and bolstering.' At the other extreme, foxes are cognitively flexible, modest and open to self-criticism."
Are you a Fox or a Hedgehog? And who would you rather listen to on TV?
The Newsweek article explored the reasons why the experts you hear pontificating in the media often
Turns out, it's at least partly because the media favors the very sort of pundit who is the least able to make accurate predictions. "The media's preferred pundits are forceful, confident and decisive, not tentative and balanced." The problem: these are not the people we should be listening to.
(This is all based on research by Philip Tetlock, who did a big study on the accuracy of expert predictions and wrote a book about it a few years ago.)
Those forceful, highly-regarded pundits? They're generally "hedgehogs." And compared to the more tentative "foxes," hedgehogs are really bad at predicting what will happen in the future. Tetlock looked at 82,361 predictions by 284 pundits, and found that the "The hedgehog-fox dimension distinguished more accurate forecasters from less accurate ones." And the more well-known the expert? The less likely it was he or she would be accurate.
Cranky Fitness prides itself on being totally obscure, so if we were ever to try to predict anything, you could totally trust us!
Also, without having read either Berlin or Tetlock, we created a somewhat similar "cognitive style analysis" a while back: the Screaming Baby-Heads versus the Wishy-Washy Grown-Ups.) Alas, Newsweek is not citing our analysis, which is too bad, because we could use a little publicity so we could let it go to our heads and get all confident and forceful like the hedgehogs!
Anyway, is it safe to assume that most of us here are Foxes, not Hedgehogs? Cranky Fitness does not have "the answer" to anything. Around here, it's all "maybe," and "apparently" and "on the other hand" and "what do we know?" and "whooops!" We also kinda get from reading your comments that you guys are every bit as flexible and balanced and confused as we are. This is Fox territory, not a great roosting place for Hedgehogs.

(Photo: meantux)
"Tentative, Balanced, and Proud of It!"
It's not a very catchy slogan, is it? But that's how we roll.
It's funny, this post was originally going to be about "Hedgehog Envy." Because sometimes I do think it would be so nice to be a Hedgehog! It would be so much easier to look at the confusing, ever-changing, frustrating, complicated world we live in and feel less conflicted and mystified.
But it's almost like there's something in the air--a barely perceptible change in tone that making the world a bit more hospitable to foxes these days. Not that we'll ever hear the end of the hedgehogs--the media will continue to favor them and of course they NEVER shut up.
However (and this may just be wishful thinking), I get the sense that regular people (as opposed to media outlets) are getting weary of all the forceful hedgehog types out there. The defensive posturing, inflexibility, black and white thinking, and "easy" answers--these don't seem the best match for the messy, complicated world we live in right now.
But I'm not a hedgehog, so what the hell do I know? What do you folks think about foxes and hedgehogs?