Abstract
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.
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Francisco Cruz
Invited Assistant Professor
Francisco Cruz is an invited assistant professor in psychology, statistics, and methods at the Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, and Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Europeia. Junior Consulting Editor at the Journal of European Social Psychology, 2025-present. Social Psychology Ph.D. on lay beliefs about science, supervised by Prof. André Mata (Universidade de Lisboa) and Prof. Tania Lombrozo (Princeton University), 2022-2025. Visiting Student Research Collaborator at Princeton University, 2023-2024. Society for General Psychology and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Fulbright Portugal, and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia awardee. His research interests include lay beliefs about science (i.e., what people believe that science can or cannot explain and why), motivated beliefs in science (i.e., the contexts in which people are more prone to accepting scientific explanations), representation of social groups (i.e., how people integrate information to provide judgments on shared homogeneity vs. heterogeneity across group members), epistemic trespassing (i.e., when people provide judgments on domains beyond those in which they are experts), intuitive mind-body dualism (i.e., a natural tendency to see the world as split in material and immaterial portions), and face perception (i.e., features driving the advantage in recall for own- vs. other-race faces).