Abstract
Determining which experts to trust is essential for both routine and high-stakes decisions, yet evaluating expertise can be difficult. In this Review, we examine the cognitive processes that underpin genuine expertise and explore the disconnect between psychological insights into expertise and the practical methods used to evaluate it. In settings where expertise must be evaluated by laypeople, such as adversarial legal trials, evaluators face substantial challenges, including knowledge disparities that hinder analysis, communication barriers that impact the clear explanation of expert methods, and procedural constraints that limit the scrutiny of expert evidence. These challenges complicate the assessment of expert claims and contribute to wrongful convictions and unjust outcomes. We suggest that a distinction between ‘show-it’ and ‘know-it’ expert performances that differ in their visibility, measurability and immediacy can be used as a heuristic for identifying when evaluations of expertise require greater care and should incorporate a variety of diagnostic factors including foundational and applied validity. Finally, we highlight key knowledge gaps and propose promising directions for future research to improve evaluations of expertise in a range of contexts.
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Fig. 1: ‘Show-it’ versus ‘know-it’ tasks.
Fig. 2: Trade-off between the visibility and diagnosticity of expert traits.
Fig. 3: Data for diagnosing expertise.
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Acknowledgements
During the preparation of this work, the authors used OpenAI ChatGPT4 to harmonize portions of the text. After using this tool, the authors reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the content of the publication.
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Authors and Affiliations
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Kristy A. Martire
Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
Tess M. S. Neal
Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Fernand Gobet
College of Law, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Jason M. Chin
School of Biomedical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Jonathan F. Berengut
School of Law, Society and Criminology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Gary Edmond
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K.A.M., T.M.S.N., F.G., J.M.C. and J.F.B. researched data for the article. All authors contributed substantially to discussion of the content. K.A.M., T.M.S.N., F.G., J.M.C. and G.E. wrote the article. K.A.M., T.M.S.N., F.G., J.M.C. and G.E. reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.
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Martire, K.A., Neal, T.M.S., Gobet, F. et al. Psychological insights for judging expertise and implications for adversarial legal contexts. Nat Rev Psychol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00430-4
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Accepted:13 February 2025
Published:17 March 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00430-4
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