Epistemic spillovers: Learning others’ political views reduces the ability to assess and use their expertise in nonpolitical domains

Marks, Joseph; Copland, Eloise; Loh, Eleanor; Sunstein, Cass R.; Sharot, Tali

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.10.003

Cited by 74 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…For example, Marks et al . [13], found that the similarity with one’s political views affects one’s ability to make accurate assessment about their fellow’s expertise in the domain of geometric shapes. Moreover, trusting in-group politicians (especially when they are powerful leaders) can happen even when this implies spreading disinformation [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bound to the group and blinded by the leader: ideological leader–follower dynamics in a trust economic game

et al. 2019

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Understanding the dynamics of trustworthiness in ideological contexts could influence human societies, affect electoral campaigns and ultimately impact democracy. We tested trust behaviour towards political leaders in a sample of 121 opposing/supporting voters assigned as trustors in an iterative trust game (TG). In two experiments, a famous Italian conservative leader (i.e. Silvio Berlusconi) or a famous non-politician were used as trustees in a predefined un/trustworthy TG, while trustors believed that mathematical algorithms reproduced trustee’s real behaviour. Results revealed that depending on the group, voters either relied on the situation and adjusted to the behaviour of the out-group leader (in our case left-wing voters), or on their disposition for group-loyalty with respect for authority, thus failing to adjust to the behaviour of the in-group leader (in our case right-wing voters). Our findings suggest that: (i) complex voter–leader relations in politics are reflected in the simple trustor–trustee financial interactions from behavioural economics, and (ii) being bound to one’s group and one’s leader may affect the trust economic decisions of the followers.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bound to the group and blinded by the leader: ideological leader–follower dynamics in a trust economic game

et al. 2019

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“…Although participants were unaware of this correlation, hobbies may have been inadvertently perceived as reliable cues by the participants, or simply perceived as more appealing information to view. It is also possible that this unexpected finding represents a form of "normative prestige", where participants wanted to copy players who had similar hobbies or viewpoints to them 28 . However, the copying rates in the first pilot study were unexpectedly low, and so this result should be interpreted with caution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emergence and adaptive use of prestige in an online social learning task

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Heap

Morgan

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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prestige-biased social learning occurs when individuals preferentially learn from others who are highly respected, admired, copied, or attended to in their group. this form of social learning is argued to reflect novel forms of social hierarchy in human societies, and, by providing an efficient shortcut to acquiring adaptive information, underpin the cumulative cultural evolution that has contributed to our species' ecological success. Despite these potentially important consequences, little empirical work to date has tested the basic predictions of prestige-biased social learning. Here we provide evidence supporting the key predictions that prestige-biased social learning is used when it constitutes an indirect cue of success, and when success-biased social learning is unavailable. We ran an online experiment (n = 269) in which participants could copy each other in real-time to score points on a general-knowledge quiz. our implementation of 'prestige' was the number of times someone had previously been copied by others. importantly, prestige was an emergent property of participants' behaviour during the experiment; no deception or manipulation of prestige was employed at any time. We found that, as predicted, participants used prestige-biased social learning when the prestige cue was an indirect cue of success, and when direct success information was unavailable. this highlights how people flexibly and adaptively employ social learning strategies based on the reliability of the information that such strategies provide. Prestige-biased social learning occurs when individuals preferentially learn from others who are highly respected, admired, copied, or attended to in their group 1,2. This social learning bias is argued to reflect novel forms of social hierarchy in human societies 1 , and, by providing an efficient shortcut to acquiring adaptive information, to underpin the cumulative cultural evolution that has contributed to our species' ecological success 3,4. Social learning in general allows humans to acquire vast amounts of adaptive information from others, from acquiring detailed tool-making skills face-to-face, to online information exchange that pervades society today. However, for social learning to be adaptive, people need to be selective in who they copy, and extensive research in the last few decades has identified particular learning biases that facilitate the efficient acquisition of relevant knowledge and skills 5-8. These include success bias, where people preferentially copy successful individuals, and prestige bias, where people use indirect cues of success to preferentially copy the most prestigious individual in the population. Prestige as an indirect cue to success was first suggested by Boyd and Richerson 9 and further developed by Henrich and Gil-White 1. The latter authors proposed that, given variation across potential demonstrators in skill and/or knowledge, the tendency to copy the most skilled or knowledgeable demonstrator (known as success-biased or payoff-biased transmission) would c...

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“…Recently, Marks, Copland, Loh, Sunstein, and Sharto (2019) Nonetheless, on the basis of research in moral psychology, we expected that shared moral values with an expert would continue to drive deference among a subset of people. This is because some people believe that moral values can be objectively right or wrong (Goodwin & Darley, 2008 (Kant, 2012(Kant, /1785Nagel, 1986).…”

Section: Moral Truth and Tribalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral tribalism and its discontents: How intuitive theories of ethics shape consumers' deference to experts

Johnson

Rodrigues

Tuckett

2020

Behavioral Decision Making

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We study the psychology at the intersection of two social trends. First, as markets become increasingly specialized, consumers must increasingly defer to outside experts to decide among complex products. Second, people divide themselves increasingly into moral tribes, defining themselves in terms of shared values with their group and often seeing these values as being objectively right or wrong. We tested how and why these tribalistic tendencies affect consumers' willingness to defer to experts. We find that consumers are indeed tribalistic in which experts they find convincing, preferring products advocated by experts who share their moral values (Study 1), with this effect generalizing across product categories (books and electronics) and measures (purchase intentions, information-seeking, willingness-topay, product attitudes, and consequential choices). We also establish the mechanisms underlying these effects: because many consumers believe moral matters to be objective facts, experts who disagree with those values are seen as less competent and therefore less believable (Studies 2 and 3), with this effect strongest among consumers who are high in their belief in objective moral truth (Study 4). Overall, these studies seek not only to establish dynamics of tribalistic deference to experts but also to identify which consumers are more or less likely to fall prey to these tribalistic tendencies.

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Epistemic spillovers: Learning others’ political views reduces the ability to assess and use their expertise in nonpolitical domains

Abstract: Highlights Participants believe politically like-minded others are better at unrelated tasks. They turn to the politically like-minded even when others are more accurate. Participants are more influenced by politically like-minded others on those issues.

Cited by 74 publications

References 27 publications

Bound to the group and blinded by the leader: ideological leader–follower dynamics in a trust economic game

Bound to the group and blinded by the leader: ideological leader–follower dynamics in a trust economic game

The emergence and adaptive use of prestige in an online social learning task

Moral tribalism and its discontents: How intuitive theories of ethics shape consumers' deference to experts

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