Lay beliefs in moral expertise

Abstract

Compared to expertise in other domains, moral expertise remains a controversial topic. The current research employs a folk-psychological approach to explore which characteristics laypeople consider to be essential for moral expertise. Study 1 indicates that laypeople associate moral experts with a virtuous character and other-oriented behavior. Formal qualifications, such as education and training, are seen as less important for moral experts, compared to other kinds of experts (Study 2a). However, professional judges – suggested by laypeople as moral experts – neither attributed the suggested characteristics of a moral expert to themselves, nor do they strongly believe in the existence of moral expertise (Study 2b). Finally, Study 3 adopted a more confirmatory approach and substantiated the key finding that laypeople expect moral experts to be virtuous rather than formally qualified, whereas for medical experts, as a comparison group, the reversed pattern emerged. Additionally, the difference between both characteristics was smaller for moral experts than for medical experts. Taken together, laypeople seem to expect a more complex and balanced set of skills from a moral expert than from experts in other domains: moral experts need not only know about what is moral, but they also need to be moral.

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