The Social Psychology of Expertise

Case Studies in Research, Professional Domains, and Expert Roles

Harald A. Mieg

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2001
• eBook ISBN: 9781135652135
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

The Social Psychology of Expertise offers an integrative perspective to the analysis of experts and expertise in organizations, social roles, management, etc. It is the first book to link the psychology of expertise to sociology, particularly the sociology of professions. By examining the converging elements of both approaches and investigating the conditions of interactions with all types of experts, The Social Psychology of Expertise makes it possible to understand the market form of expert services. This book:
*introduces the expert role approach --a new and encompassing view on the role of experts and how to use the experts' expertise in organizations, financial markets, and environmental issues;
*enhances a mutual understanding between the psychology of expertise and the sociology of professions (for students, as well as scholars);
*provides a helpful understanding of dealing with experts in the context of organizational behavior;
*shows how we can make proper use of the experts' expertise in management and planning;
*demonstrates how the role of experts influences volatility in financial markets; and
*defines the limits of human expertise in predicting climate change.

Chapter

1

Introduction

One of the gravest of cognitive problems in the modern world is that of rendering accessible in an organized, coherent, and coordinated way the information already, broadly speaking, available—a process that is invariably difficult and expensive.

—Nicholas Rescher (1989, pp. 10–11)

In a nutshell, this quote from philosopher Nicholas Rescher shows many of the issues regarding the dissemination and use of knowledge in today’s knowledge-based societies:

• First, the use of knowledge requires an institutionalized form of exchange (organized way), such as books, schools, or experts.

• Second, knowledge is time-dependent; relevant information refers to the knowledge base of a particular time (information already available).

• Third, exchanging knowledge can be costly (difficult and expensive); as far as knowledge is subject to valuation and selection, it has an economic dimension.

This book focuses on experts as part of a society’s knowledge base. It presents cognitive expertise as a particular sort of an individual, human capacity. Expertise is based on knowledge. But is it the same? There are doubts. Expertise has its specific developmental aspect—we have to train to become experts. In contrast, knowledge per se seems to have an impersonal, transpersonal quality. Speaking of cognitive problems, Rescher, as a philosopher, did not refer to individual problems of cognition, but to a general problem of rationality. The general question “How can cognition be considered both human and rational?” is remarkably fundamental. In this book, we can only touch it but not thoroughly explore it. Instead, we look at human expertise as the basis of a society’s knowledge and its exchange.

The title of this book—The Social Psychology of Expertise—reflects an approach where we will not speak of expertise except in the social context. Thus, the book is concerned with experts in their working contexts and social interactions—this includes everyday phenomena such as

• disputing experts,

• experts who err,

• rather limited expertise or limits to experts, respectively, and

• experts who cannot clearly explain what they do.

However usual these phenomena are, they seem to conflict with our expectations about what experts should be. In this book, we enter a discussion on the role of experts and on rendering cognitive expertise accessible—a discussion similar to the discussion on knowledge exchange with Rescher. From the point of view of social psychology, we consider both the inner, psychological side of expertise and its outside—the social function of expertise. In particular, we have to ask: “How can knowledge exchange be considered both an instance of individual expertise and the realization of a social function?”

Obviously, expertise concerns a person and a function. The remainder of this chapter acquaints the reader with:

• how our question is linked to the discussion of expertise in current psychology,

• how we can tackle it from a social psychology point of view, and

• the rationale and content of The Social Psychology of Expertise.

1.1 Expertise

What is an expert? Experts—in the original literal sense—are experimentalists: They know from active, reflexive experience. Accepting this definition as a starting point, we can ask: What is special as to experts? Does not everybody know from—more or less reflexive—experience? The Nature of Expertise, a textbook on the cognitive psychology of expertise edited by Chi, Glaser, and Farr (1988), started with the introductory question, “How do we identify a person as exceptional or gifted?” (Posner, 1988, p. xxix). This kind of question leads us into a differential approach, comparing experts with nonexperts. From a psychological point of view, there are two further directions. First, we can look for differences in personality: where experts excel in intelligence, reasoning strategies, or cognitive information-processing capabilities. Second, we can look for differences in learning conditions such as training and schooling or cognitive stimulation. In addition, we can mix both approaches and describe expertise as the result of a specific developmental, learning-based process that shapes a personality—the expert.

We find this differential approach with K. Anders Ericsson. In his book, Towards a General Theory of Expertise (edited with J. Smith in 1991), he wrote,

[T]he study of expertise seeks to understand and account for what distinguishes outstanding individuals in a domain from less outstanding individuals in that domain, as well as from people in general. (Ericsson & Smith 1991a, p. 2).

Ericsson limited his approach to the study of cases, “in which the outstanding behavior can be attributed to relatively stable characteristics of the relevant individuals” (loc. cit.). Ericsson argued, “We believe that stability of the individual characteristics is a necessary condition for any empirical approach seeking to account for the behavior with reference to characteristics of the individual” (Ericsson & Smith 1991a, p. 2).

Paradigmatic examples for this kind of approach are excellence in chess, sports, and music. In these cases, we have competitions with high rewards and established performance criteria. Moreover, there seems to be a clear line of development with a long phase of individual training and growing expertise, distinctive phases of superior performance, and, generally, some kind of retreat or final resignation. Following Ericsson, only some of the individuals in these fields are experts—the best ones. The question that remains is: How representative are these sorts of expertise for expertise in general? Do we think of competitions of chess players, athletes, or musicians when speaking of experts’ disputes? Ericsson’s approach risks excluding from analysis many interesting cases of expertise from the beginning.

The textbook The Nature of Expertise presented examples of expertise from a variety of fields, including typewriting, restaurant orders, mental calculation, computer programming, judicial decision making, and X-ray diagnostics. In many cases, the experts were the individuals with high task performance. In other cases, they were professionals such as physicians. If we apply Ericsson’s expert criterion to professionals, we have to ask: Is every professional an expert showing outstanding performance? Are there professions without any experts or expertise? Lacking overt competition criteria, the studies in fields such as medical diagnosis do not refer to differences between single professionals, but between professionals and non-professionals or professionals and students. Shifting from an expert definition based on outstanding performance (such as sports champions) to a definition based on professionalism, the understanding of expertise becomes dependent on an analysis of professional work.

Sylvia Scribner went one step further in her studies in 1984. She examined expertise in blue-collar work in a medium-sized milk-processing plant. Her subjects were, for instance, preloaders and wholesale drivers, but also some clerks. She invented experimental cognitive tasks parallel in structure to specific everyday work in the plant. She could demonstrate that any group of workers outperformed the other groups in tasks that had a cognitive structure similar to its everyday work. For instance, preloaders responsible for the assembly of milk cases showed “a large repertoire of solution strategies” for product assembly tasks (p. 21). Scribner spoke of working intelligence and concluded that: “expertise is a function of experience” (p. 24)—a conclusion that is a general working hypothesis in cognitive psychology. Expertise is mainly based on experience. This has also been the intent of the often cited verse “Experto credite” by the Roman poet Virgil: Trust the one with personal experience. Our question (What is special as to experts?) can now be provisionally answered: It is superior performance based on specialized experience.

A completely different concept of expertise, although similar at first glance, is to understand experts as specialists having specialized knowledge. Whereas the concept of expertise-by-experience views expertise from an inner, cognitive point of view, the reference to knowledge starts with an outside view of expertise. Here, again, we see a difference between knowledge and experience. An expert-by-experience must be an expert in a field. An expert-by-knowledge can also be an expert about the field, lacking personal experience in the field. Notoriously, this is the case in academia. In general, academics are experienced in academic life, including adaptation to academic performance criteria. However, academic and scientific knowledge generally refers to phenomena outside the university—nature, society, human health, and so on. Historians, archaeologists, astronomers, and other scientists do not even have a real chance to physically enter the field of their scientific concern.

The understanding of experts as knowledge specialists meets everyday concepts—prejudices—about experts. In 1990, Donald N. McCloskey, a scholar in history and economy, described the “narrative of economic expertise.” His book’s title expresses what McCloskey called the “American question: If you’re so smart why ain’t you rich?” If someone as an expert has sound knowledge about economics, he or she should also be able to utilize this knowledge in real business. This is not generally the case. McCloskey cited proverblike remarks on experts that reflect this concept of experts as knowledge specialists and expresses one part of public opinion on expertise:

Harry Truman: “An expert is someone who doesn’t want to learn anything new, because then he wouldn’t be an expert.” (see McCloskey, 1990, p. Ill)

N. M. Butler, former president of Columbia University: “Experts know more and more about less and less.” (loc. cit.)

McCloskey (1990) resumed in the same direction: “The expert as expert, a bookish sort consulting what is already known, cannot by his nature learn anything new, because then he wouldn’t be an expert. […] Smartness of the expert’s sort cannot proceed to riches” (p. 134). Can we leave aside the concept of expert-by-knowledge? It might be a viable strategy of psychology to discuss no cases of experts with uncertain expertise, but focus on analyzing real expertise that fulfills high-performance criteria. This strategy might also fulfill the wish of the public to sort out bad expertise. However, there is a serious phenomenon to explain so-called experts that lies beyond the explanatory range of defining experts by performance. These are, for example, experts giving political advice or consulting international firms. We cannot understand these cases if we do not take very seriously what Hoffman, Feltovich, and Ford (1997) concluded, resuming the state of the art of the psychology of expertise—namely: the “minimum unit of analysis” is the “expert-in-context” (p. 553).

1.2 Social Psychology

Social psychology is concerned with the interactions between persons and situations, the situations being defined by, for instance, groups, organizations, or personal relationships. This also pertains to experts. Irving L. Janis (1972), in his book Victims of Groupthink, analyzed failures of expert advise caused by the dynamics of an expert advisory group. The centerpiece of his book is the analysis of the Bay of Pigs invasion. On April 17, 1961, a trained group of about 1,400 Cuban exiles, aided by the CIA, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force, invaded the coast of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. However, nothing went according to plan. Within 3 days, all invaders were killed or captured by Cuban troops. The mission ended as a complete fiasco.

President John F. Kennedy, who decided on the invasion, was advised by a group of highly qualified experts. Nevertheless, the group—including Kennedy himself—made assumptions that proved to be completely wrong. For example, they mistakenly assumed that the invasion would provoke armed uprisings in Cuba. Janis described this phenomenon as a groupthink syndrome, consisting of

• overestimations of the group—its power and morality,

• closed-mindedness, and

• pressures toward uniformity.

The expert advisory group did not even realize that one central element of the plan disappeared due to an alteration in other parts of the plan: The invading exiles should at least have had the opportunity to retreat in the Cuban mountains—an impossibility after having finally decided to land at the Bay of Pigs.

Janis’ analysis pertains to policymaking groups in general and seems not specific to expert advise. Unfortunately, the analysis gives no answer to questions concerning the expertise of the involved advisors: How did their role as experts or specific aspects of their expertise contribute to the result of the expert advisory group? How is expertise linked to the interaction as expert?

We find more studies in this direction in the sociology of science. For instance, H. M. Collins (1985) studied replication and induction in scientific practice. In particular, Collins found an experimenters' regress: “[S]ince experimentation is a matter of skillful practice, it can never be clear whether a second experiment has been done sufficiently well to count as check on the result of the first. Some further test is needed to test the quality of the experiment—and so forth” (p. 2). In a thorough case study, Collins described the replication of the Transversely Excited Atmospheric (TEA) Laser—a special laser that uses carbon dioxide at atmospheric pressure. Collins showed that even when every component is explicitly known, building the laser is a skill derived from training and developed over time. Collins (1985) concluded, “Experimental ability has the character of a skill that can be acquired and developed with practice. Like a skill, it cannot be fully explained or absolutely established” (p. 73). The experimenters’ regress is basically connected to peculiarities of scientific expertise. It takes time to become capable of properly conducting a scientific experiment. From this point of view, it is not surprising to see science divided in schools that develop their specific methods and adhere to diverging theoretical frameworks.

A similar concept of developing knowledge, but that is far more generalized, is proposed by William J. Clancey. In his approach to situated cognition, he tried to “re-relate” human knowledge and programs of artificial intelligence (AI; Clancey, 1997b). Clancey claimed that human activity, including knowledge, basically routes in an adaptation to environmental constraints:

Every human thought and action is adapted to the environment, that is,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Where We Should Start: Cognitive Economics
• 3. Essentials of Experts-in-Contexts: “The Expert”-Interaction
• 4. In a New Light: Organizational Role Conflicts With Experts, and Their Resolution
• 5. Case Study I: Experts—Risk—Financial Markets
• 6. Case Study II: Predicting Climate Change 1988–1997
• 7. Conclusions for the Conceptualization of Expertise in Context: Types of Experts, Uncertainty, and Insecurity
• 8. Conclusions for Management With Experts: The Expert Role Approach
• Bibliographical Notes
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index