ABSTRACT

As misperceptions undermine the factual basis for public debate, they pose a serious challenge to expert knowledge and the democratic legitimacy of public policy informed by expert evidence. In this paper, we theorize that in times of politicization and polarization of expertise, endorsement of expert information by a minipublic can serve to legitimize expert correction and render it more persuasive in the eyes of individuals. In developing our theoretical argument, we focus on the effect of a minipublic on individuals in the wider public – those who did not participate in such institutions. To test our theoretical predictions, we designed, pre-registered and fielded two experiments in the US (N = 2168) and one experiment in Ireland (N = 1125), during two different waves of COVID-19. The results show that minipublic endorsement significantly increases the uptake of expert information among (nonparticipating) citizens. Furthermore, when an expert correction explicitly asserts a scientific consensus, it is as effective as the minipublic endorsement. The findings have implications for the research on misperceptions, expertise and deliberative institutions.

摘要

由于误解破坏了公共辩论的事实基础，它们对专家知识和专家证据所支持的公共政策的民主合法性构成了严重挑战。在本文中，我们的理论是，在专业知识政治化和两极分化的时代，小公众对专家信息的认可可以使专家纠正合法化，并使其在个人眼中更具说服力。在发展我们的理论论证时，我们关注小公众对更广泛公众中的个人（那些没有参与此类机构的人）的影响。为了检验我们的理论预测，我们在美国设计、预先注册并进行了两项实验（N  = 2168），在爱尔兰进行了一项实验（N = 1125），在两次不同的 COVID-19 浪潮中。结果表明，小规模公众认可显着增加了（非参与）公民对专家信息的吸收。此外，当专家更正明确主张科学共识时，它与公众认可一样有效。这些发现对错误认知、专业知识和审议机构的研究具有重要意义。