Social Expertise 1

Expertise as a social construct
1. Experts have massive influence on interpersonal interactions + culture
2. Overlap with research on authority, leadership, persuasion, politics
3. Allows us to apply social psych to real world issue
Defining expertise - 2 approaches:
1. Absolute approach
  1. study of truly exceptional people
  2. focuses on measures of performance
  3. retrospective - eg no. of games/achievements
  4. eg Muhammed Ali - won heavyweight championship at 22yrs
  5. usually suggests a genetic approach
  6. Chi - assumption is that greatness/creativity from chance/ unique innate talent
2. Relative approach
  1. expertise in comparison to novices
  2. chi - assumes expertise is a level of proficiency novices can achieve
  3. implication: if relative, there can be movement. people can go from novice to expert, and can study how they do this. See Chi proficiency scale
How do we distinguish expert from non-expert?
1. markers of expertise
  1. knowledge
    1. clearly needed for expertise
    2. someone without knowledge wouldn't suit being called expert
    3. X isn't enough to just have knowledge. Must know when knowledge relevant
    4. X expertise usually involves responding to novel info
  2. certification
    1. indicates degree of expertise, knowledge + ability to apply knowledge
    2. generally safe to say someone with qualification more likely to become expert than someone without
    3. X usually tied to years of job
    4. X do qualifications reflect skills?
    5. X once certified, people are certified for life - 'ratchet up effect'
  3. experience
    1. Goldberg
      1. expert clinicians, mid-level clinicians, naïve group
      2. real patient data
      3. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - still one of the most widely used standardized psychometric tests of adult personality + psychopathology
      4. diagnose psychiatric cases
      5. no relship between experience + diagnostic accuracy, but confidence did increase with accuracy
      6. over 17 weeks received training: naïve group increased in accuracy 52%-58%. expert + mid-level stayed same at ~65%
      7. results of indivs is indicator of expertise
      8. we usually believe something when no. of indivs support it
    2. related to meaning of 'expert'
    3. one of most frequently used measures of expertise
    4. most experts will have considerable amount of experience
    5. X ignores experts with little experience
    6. X ignores many non-experts with years of experience
  4. Consensus: Groupthink
    1. Asch conformity experiment
      1. 3 lines
      2. 32% agreed on majority of trials. 75% conformed at least once. <1% controls answered incorrectly
    2. term first used in 1972 by social psych Janis
    3. people strive for consensus within a group
    4. people will set aside own beliefs + adopt opinion of group
    5. don't want to disrupt uniformity of crowd
    6. good - allows group to make decisions quickly
    7. X suppression of indiv opinions can lead to poor decision making
    8. tends to occur in situations where group members similar + more likely when charismatic leader commands group
2. X who says experts can't be wrong
3. to consider someone an expert, must think they're more knowledgeable than non-experts
  1. X peer group effects - if you aren't popular with group, unlikely to be recommended as expert
    1. Suls, Lemos + Stewart
      1. ppts rate themselves, friends + generalised others on +ve + -ve measures
      2. eg positive: sensible, neat, well-read, sophisticated
      3. eg negative: gullible, gossipy, insecure
      4. rated themselves highest, then friends, then generalised others
    2. Milton - many pioneering discoveries made by indivs who were ignored by peers
4. Chi - proficiency scale - adapted from Hoffman
  1. Novice - new members. minimal exposure
    1. initiate - novice who's done initiation ceremony
      1. apprentice - learning at introductory level
        journeyman - can perform orders unsupervised
        expert - brilliant journeyman, regarded by peers, accurate judgements
        master - expert qualified to teach, of elite group of experts
Farrington-Darby + Wilson
1. review of expertise + its study
2. source of confusion + conflicting findings in literature on expertise comes from variety of investigator's disciplines + perspectives -> has impact on method choice
3. most recently, the attrition (falling short of skills) of skilled performers in many industries has motivated organisation to try understand what distinguishes expert from rest
4. own work on railways - interested in understanding expertise for 4 major purposes:
  1. 1) To develop better human factors tools + solutions for future
    1. 2) Future of rail network control will increasingly depend on appropriate + useful intelligent decision support systems
      1. 3) Need to understand how 'expert' signallers + controllers deal with network at present - eg in abnormal circumstances
        4) Loss of expertise + opportunities to develop expertise has meant Network Rail must take v serious look at what experts of future should be + how to develop them
How many hours of practice to become expert?
1. Watson - founder of behaviourism
  1. practicing more intensively than others = probably most reasonable explanation we have for success + genius
2. Simon + Chase
  1. investigated chess mastery
  2. no instant experts
  3. estimate v roughly that a master has spent 10k-50k hours practice
3. Hayes
  1. analysed music 1685-1900
  2. identified top 500 pieces by 76 composers
  3. in almost every case, greatest work not created until 10yrs experience composing
4. Ericsson et al
  1. music academy, west berlin
  2. 10 students - best violinists. 10 students - good violinists. 10 students - future music teachers.
  3. retrospective questionnaire
  4. best 2 groups had deliberate practice
  5. 'deliberate practice' - activities specially designed to improve performance level. not performances, competitions, paid services, not enjoyable...
  6. as age increased + practice increased (diff between groups), performance level increased.
  7. cited more than 4200 times, confirmation bias. See Bacon
5. 10k rule popularised by Gladwell (author)
  1. takes 10k hours to become an expert at anything. 'practice makes perfect'
    1. X Epstein - practice is important but eg Jamaicans dominate sprinting, Kenyans dominate long distance - it's in the genes
      1. - Gladwell only applied rule to cognitively demanding activities
6. Bacon - the confirmation bias
  1. when adopted an opinion, draws everything to support it. although may be greater number of instances proving wrong, neglects + rejects these.
    1. we see patterns we want to see, even if not actually there
7. Problems with 10k rule
  1. most often cited studies rely on historical analysis + self report
  2. number appeared plucked from thin air. Ericsson maths doesn't make sense
  3. Heavy criticism from researchers - 'blindness to decades of psych theorising'
  4. Hambrick - meta-analysis of effect of deliberate practice on music + chess. in both, practice only made up ~30% of variance in performance. leaves a lot unexplained
    1. other factors? starting age, intelligence (working mem capacity), personality?
Are experts more persuasive than non-experts?
1. Many companies think so - used in media a lot
2. Kelman 1952
  1. expert vs attractive vs powerful
  2. when source attractive, ppts persuaded by identification. want to establish/maintain satisfying relship to another person
  3. when source expert, ppts persuaded by internalisation. behaviour adopted tends to be integrated with indiv's existing values. satisfaction due to content of new beh
3. Hovland + Weiss 1951
  1. Few studies consider effectiveness of persuasion in attitude of the audience to communicator
    1. untrustworthy sources eg mass circulation magazine, controversh columnist, movie-gossip columnist
      1. trustworthy sources eg journal of bio + medicine, national boards, good rep magazine
        questionnaires 1-5 scale to evaluate ppt's attitudes of trustworthiness before study = not associated with experiment
        2nd questionnaire on reactions to articles - gradually to opinion q's.
        ppts discounted material from untrustworthy sources. in time, tended to disassociate content + source = original scepticism faded + untrustworthy material accepted
        changes in opinion sig related to trustworthiness of source
        we are persuaded by 'credible sources' - knowledgable, trustworthy
        X many ppts didn't complete study - not compulsory. only 61 students completed
        supports sleeper effect - psych phenomenon related to persuasion.
        when exposed normally to persuasive messages, attitudes supporting message increase
        over time, decay -> attitudes gravitate back to previous opinion
        contrast - low cred/distrust messages arouses suspicion + attitude change to message. but when exposed to persuasive distrust message, tend to be more persuaded over time = sleeper effect
        political campaings - undecided voters see negative advert by opposite party. question trustworthiness, not persuaded initially. but even though low cred, more likely to be persuaded late + vote against party in ad
4. Petty + Cacioppo
  1. Message -> audience factors -> processing approach -> persuasion outcome
  2. message -> high motivation -> deep processing focused on message quality -> lasting change that resists fading + counterattacks
  3. message -> low motivation -> superficial processing of surface features eg attractiveness -> temporary change susceptible to
5. = expertise can influence attitudes, but can it really influence perception + beh?
  1. Crisci + Kassinove
    1. does explicit label signalling expertise influence beh in real world?
    2. 96 mother-child pairings. parents thought psych giving evaluation. offered card to redeem parenting guide book.
      1. when dressed as expert, 2/3rds took card, half redeemed. when non-expert, 3/8ths took card, 1/3rd redeemed
  2. Petty, Cacioppo + Goldman
    1. ppts heard argument for changes in uni policies. manipulated source. half heard report by high school class - low expertise. half heard report by prof of ed - high expertise. actually, all heard same speaker. manipulated strength of argument.
      1. same results as petty + cacioppo. favoured expert source + strong arguments.
        X ofc, usually have pre-existing beliefs on topics. don't usually change beliefs just because expert suggested
6. not a yes/no answer. persuasiveness of expert depends on situational + indiv diff
7. Clark et al - if we anticipate argument will threaten beliefs, will process argument centrally rather than peripherally.
  1. how do our starting beliefs influence how persuasive we find expert's argument? Asked ppts in favour of 'fast food tax'. told source was leading scholar / high school junior. argument strength manipulated. expert sources considered to elicit more persuasive processing cause expectations of info to be valid/accurate. attitude increased (+ persuaded) when source expertise high + message strong.
    1. Expert. Counter-attitude - influenced by strength. Pro-attitude - not influenced by strength
      1. Non-Expert. Counter-attitude - not influenced by strength. Pro-attitude - influenced by strength.
        Perceive threat -> central processing -> influenced by argument strength
        Don't perceive threat -> peripheral processing -> not influenced by argument strength
        expectations can also work against experts - if we expect strong argument + they don't, we punish them
        tendency for experts to be more persuasive than non-experts

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	Created by lady_pisces almost 9 years ago