Authority Bias

6. Authority

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual" – Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

After the break-in at John's office, he said: "Of course, I believed he was a security guard, since he had a uniform."

We tend to obey an authority, especially when we are uncertain, supervised, or when people around us are doing the same. We are most easily influenced by credible authorities, those we see as both knowledgeable and trustworthy.

"I read it in the New England Journal of Medicine, so it must be correct."

Names and reputation influence us. And symbols of power or status like titles, possessions, rank, uniforms, or a nice suit and tie. For example, in one study 22 hospital nurses got a telephone call from an unknown physician and were ordered to administer an obvious overdose of an unauthorized drug. All but one nurse began to comply; this does not mean that the doses were administered.

Another example is when advertisers use famous people to endorse their products. But being famous doesn't give people special expertise.

"The more I didn't understand, the more I believed the expert."

Experts are sometimes more convincing when we don't understand them. Sometimes we are too impressed by something that sounds clever. For example, some people buy into investments just because they don't understand them. They assume it must be something unique. As Warren Buffett says, "Techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising 'Take two aspirins'?"

"I was only following orders." Blind obedience is sometimes a way to rationalize dumb actions.

"I believed he was making a mistake, but I didn't dare tell him. After all, he is the expert." A study involving airline pilots cited conflict avoidance as a contributing factor to crashes. Officers are reluctant to disagree with the authority of pilots. For example, in a crash of a DC-8 in 1978, the flight engineer told the captain that they were running out of fuel. The captain dismissed the warning and the plane crashed.

In 1997, a female police officer in Scotland was assigned to a murder investigation. Forensic investigators later found her thumbprint in the house where the murder victim was found. But the woman insisted, under oath, she had never been inside the house. Four experts from the Scottish Criminal Record Office said that the print was hers. She was suspended and accused of perjury. Subsequent events showed that the fingerprint was neither hers nor from a thumb, but from a forefinger. Thus, experts make mistakes.

Authority is so powerful that we may cause pain to other people to comply. The British novelist and scientist Charles Percy Snow said in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: "When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion."

In experiments at Yale University, Stanley Milgram studied how participants responded to an experimenter’s instructions to administer what they believed were painful shocks. The participants in the experiment were instructed to shock another person if they answered a question wrong. No real pain was delivered during the experiment. The experiments showed that some participants continued under an apparently legitimate authority’s instructions despite believing that they were hurting another person. In later studies Milgram showed that obedience was maximized by first observing peers obey but dramatically reduced when peers rebelled, or when the victim acted like a masochist asking to be shocked. Milgram said in Obedience to Authority: "It is psychologically easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an immediate link in a chain of evil action."

Keep in mind

• Evaluate the evidence for a statement. Relevant expertise and a record of reliability can inform that assessment; social status alone cannot establish truth.
• Anyone can call themselves an expert. Check whether the person has expertise relevant to this particular claim.
• An authority may have an interest in persuading you to believe something that is in their interest. Always consider reliability, credibility, sensibility and bias. To appear trustworthy, a persuader may mention weaknesses before strengths or offer information that seems contrary to their interests. This technique is often used by salesmen and negotiators.