Stradivarius violins are exceedingly rare and expensive instruments that command eye-watering prices when they come up for sale. I’ve written about them before (here).
In this first video, the mayor of Bergamo brings a $15 million Stradivarius to a prospective buyer for evaluation:
Under these conditions, marshalling an objective opinion of the violin would be tough don’t you think. I wondered whether this same guy could be made to look the fool by being presented with a considerably cheaper violin at the last minute? Probably. Context and expectations heavily influence the way we see things.
The reality is that our cognitive biases make truly objective opinions hard to come by. As pointed out by Dan Ariely in ‘Predictably Irrational’ people general get what they expect they’ll get. When the cues are hidden, as in blind testing, even experts can be easily embarrassed.
Take the experiment the Washington Post ran in 2007 (you can read the article here). They enlisted virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell to play his Stradivarius in the Washington Underground for 90 minutes. They wanted to see what whether the commuters’ expectations of just another ‘busker’ could be overturned.
Could the great Joshua Bell, incognito, the draw an audience of unsuspecting commuters?
Jeremy James in Hong Kong 
…and we thought a 61 strat was high! I agree with what you are saying…in that environment and under that impression…you could very well hear what you want to hear.
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I’d prefer the strat! I guess if the strat was made in 1705 – prices might go up a little as well lol
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