Politics matter more than credentials in laypeople’s judgments of expertise

Abstract

We explored the cues laypeople use to determine who is an expert on a given topic. In Study 1 (n = 208), we collected participants’ self-reports of cues they consider important when evaluating a putative expert. Across various topics, participants rated good cues (e.g., relevant degree, more experience) as more important for expertise while disregarding poor or superficial cues (e.g., appearance). In Study 2 (n = 498), we conducted a conjoint experiment where we manipulated several cues of expertise in biographies of hypothetical experts. In line with the self-reports, good cues had the strongest effects on trust. In Study 3 (n = 1,776), we examined whether participants would still recognize good cues when they received information about the expert’s political views. Using a highly politicized topic—abortion—we manipulated the expert’s views along with their credentials. Participants trusted likeminded experts more, and the effect of the expert’s views on participants’ trust was more than twice as large as the effect of credentials. Our results paint a complicated picture, where laypeople know what qualities to look for in experts but attend to political information more readily than to good cues of expertise.

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