Cruz Francisco, Lombrozo Tania
CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal.
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2025 Jun 12. doi: 10.1038/s41562-025-02227-0.
Individuals rely on others' expertise to achieve a basic understanding of the world. But how can non-experts achieve understanding from explanations that, by definition, they are ill-equipped to assess? Across 9 experiments with 6,698 participants (Study 1A = 737; 1B = 734; 1C = 733; 2A = 1,014; 2B = 509; 2C = 1,012; 3A = 1,026; 3B = 512; 4 = 421), we address this puzzle by focusing on scientific explanations with jargon. We identify 'when' and 'why' the inclusion of jargon makes explanations more satisfying, despite decreasing their comprehensibility. We find that jargon increases satisfaction because laypeople assume the jargon fills gaps in explanations that are otherwise incomplete. We also identify strategies for debiasing these judgements: when people attempt to generate their own explanations, inflated judgements of poor explanations with jargon are reduced, and people become better calibrated in their assessments of their own ability to explain.
个体依靠他人的专业知识来实现对世界的基本理解。但是，非专业人士如何能从那些从定义上讲他们没有能力评估的解释中获得理解呢？在对6698名参与者进行的9项实验中（研究1A = 737人；1B = 734人；1C = 733人；2A = 1014人；2B = 509人；2C = 1012人；3A = 1026人；3B = 512人；4 = 421人），我们通过关注带有行话的科学解释来解决这个难题。我们确定了包含行话“何时”以及“为何”会使解释更令人满意，尽管这会降低其可理解性。我们发现行话会提高满意度，因为外行假定行话填补了原本不完整的解释中的空白。我们还确定了消除这些判断偏差的策略：当人们试图生成自己的解释时，对带有行话的糟糕解释的过高判断会降低，并且人们在评估自己解释能力时会变得校准得更好。
