Gregory Mitchell (University of Virginia School of Law) & Philip E. Tetlock (University of California, Berkeley – Organizational Behavior & Industrial Relations Group; University of Pennsylvania – Management Department) have posted Psychological Elitism (Theory and Society) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Elites can be differentiated from non-elites by their status-enhancing attributes: their accomplishments, expertise, and group memberships. Elitism is the belief that elites deserve epistemic deference because they better understand the workings of the world. Psychological elitism posits the existence of a class of elites who possess specialized knowledge of subconscious (motivational and cognitive) drivers of human judgment that is beyond the ken of non-elites. This article challenges whether psychological elites deserve deference. The central problem is the elusiveness of ground-truth standards for determining the true drivers of judgments. To warrant deference, psychological elites must demonstrate that their reasoning operates free of the same subconscious distortions ascribed to non-elites. Absent such demonstrations, it is fair game-under the very theories that psychological elites endorse-to question the competence of psychological elites to second-guess the true reasons underlying the views of non-elites.
Very interesting and recommended.