red herring

(noun)

A clue or information that is or is intended to be misleading, that diverts attention from a question;often thought to relate to using smelly fish to train dogs to recognize the real scent of something they were suppose to be tracking.

Related Terms

Examples of red herring in the following topics:

  • Logical Fallacies

    • Red herring (Ignoratio Elenchi): intentionally or unintentionally misleading or distracting from the actual issue.

  • The Responding Stage

    • During a training session, a new employee nods and says "okay" to indicate that she understand what her boss is telling her.
    • Nonverbal signals can include gestures such as nodding, making eye contact, tapping her pen, fidgeting, scratching or cocking her head, smiling, rolling her eyes, grimacing, or any other body language.
    • Oftentimes, the speaker looks for verbal and nonverbal responses from the listener to determine if and how her message is being understood and/or considered.
    • Based on the listener's responses, the speaker can choose to either adjust or continue with the delivery of her message.
    • For example, if a listener's brow is furrowed and her arms are crossed, the speaker may determine that she needs to lighten her tone to better communicate her point.

  • Be an Open-Minded Listener: Suspend Judgment and Exercise Empathy

    • It does not mean that the listener should not have strong views of his or her own, but it does require the listener to be willing to consider the merit of what other people say.
    • They do not jump to conclusions, but rather hear the speaker out entirely and make an effort to understand his or her lines of argument.
    • This kind of judgmental listening prevents the listener from fully engaging with the speaker on his or her own terms, and therefore limits the scope of the conversation.
    • To listen effectively, one must work to temporarily suspend those associations in order to understand the speaker on his or her own terms.
    • One of the primary jobs of an effective listener is to get in touch with the speaker's perspective and not to color it with his or her own.

  • Persuasive Speeches

    • In a persuasive speech, a speaker attempts to persuade the audience to adopt his/her position in relation to a topic.
    • An appeal to ethos is used to show the character of the speaker and make him/her more credible.

  • What to Look For

    • A public speaker should turn her mental magnifying glass inward to examine the values, beliefs, attitudes, and biases that may influence her perception of others.
    • When the speaker views the audience only through her mental perception, she is likely to engage in egocentrism.
    • The speaker should attempt to reach the most accurate and effective analysis of her audience within a reasonable amount of time.
    • For example, speakers can assess the demographics of her audience.

  • Giving Effective Criticism: Be Positive, Specific, Objective, and Constructive

    • There is an art to truly constructive criticism, since one can have good intentions but poor delivery ("I don't know why my girlfriend keeps getting mad when I tell her to stop with the fries already; I'm just concerned about her weight"), or egocentric intentions but appropriate delivery ("I'm sick of my subordinate coming in late for work, so I took her aside and we had a long, compassionate talk about her work-life balance.
    • Positively intended, and appropriately motivated: you are not only sending back messages about how you are receiving the other's message, but about how you feel about the other person and your relationship with him/her.

  • Make Adjustments

    • A public speakers can use information about the audience to adapt his or her message to the particular audience while preparing the speech.
    • While structuring the message, the speaker should keep his or her imagined, theoretical audience in mind and anticipate how they might respond to the speech as follows:
    • The speaker can then apply this knowledge in his or her message to meet the audience on common ground and identify with them.
    • The speaker may have to set aside his or her own attitudes, values, and beliefs in order to temporarily adopt the viewpoint of the audience.
    • What sources will the audience accept as authorities that might be different from the authorities that the speaker cites to support his or her arguments, or beliefs?

  • The Role of Color

    • Red comes in second, even though it is not the most visible.
    • But too much red can be too strong.

  • Tailor Abstraction to Your Audience

    • I take this one characteristic, the color, and give it a label, for example, red.
    • I abstract the color and give it the label red.
    • For you my label red is not connected with the objects I saw, but you may see similar objects and learn to assign the same label, red, to the color.

  • The Rough Draft Outline

    • They provide a pattern from which the speaker writes his or her main statement, argument, and supporting points.
    • A Conclusion: The speaker should note how they will restate his or her point of view and summarize the argument.
    • Because this is the rough draft outline, the outline too will ultimately change as the speechwriter conducts additional research and continues to shape his or her speech topic.