Politics interferes with the ability to assess expertise | Joseph Marks

Oct. 23, 2018 (Phys.org) -- Learning about someone's political beliefs interferes with a person's ability to assess expertise, as people judge like-minded peers as being more expert in fields completely unrelated to politics, finds a new UCL-led study.

In the paper, published in Cognition, the researchers found that people turned to peers with similar political views for help on a shape categorization task that had nothing to do with politics, instead of seeking help from someone who was doing better at the shape categorization task but didn't share their political leanings.

"Our findings have implications for the spread of false news, for political polarisation and for social divisions. If we are aware of a person's political leanings, for example on social media, we will be more likely to accept their take on a myriad of issues without scrutiny," said the study's senior author, Professor Tali Sharot (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences).

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