The Expertise Bias:its psychological mechanisms, sources and consequences on the example of epistemic authority ascribed to economic experts

The main goal of the present project will be to study how lay people perceive and evaluate epistemic authority (denoting a source of information which has a determinative influence on the acquisition of knowledge) in the field of economic expertise. In our research we also introduce and empirically test the term “expertise bias”. It is defined as a systematic inclination to treat the opinion of a certain source of expertise as incontrovertible and trustworthy, and to use it as a basis for making own judgments and decisions, independently of the factual level of such expertise, but relying on superficial premises. As mentioned, we would study this bias in the field of economic expertise, because to our good knowledge no research in economic or cognitive psychology examined how lay people ascribe epistemic authority to experts in this field.

Other more specific goals (research questions) that are associated with particular research tasks are following:

• To what degree biases that were found in studies on perceiving epistemic authority in medicine (Barnoy, Ofra, & Bar- Tal, 2012; Barnoy, Levy, & Bar- Tal, 2009; Bar-Tal, Stasiuk, & Maksymiuk, in press), such as trusting in active and broader advice more than in a narrower and passive advice, are also present in people’s evaluation of epistemic authority in economics?

• How different features of recommendations given by financial experts (e.g., the type or riskiness of action that is advised to be taken) influence the perception of epistemic authority and the processing of knowledge?

• How processing of knowledge acquired from experts depends on the so-called self-epistemic authority, i.e., perceived own knowledge in a certain field?

• How the strength of the need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski, 2004) and individual propensity to take economic risks affect processing knowledge acquired from experts and evaluating epistemic authority in the field of economics?

• What is the interdependence between the perception of economic epistemic authority and making financial choices in different areas (e.g., making financial transactions, buying insurance policies, taking bank loans)?