It is widely debated how ordinary citizens understand and use different types of knowledge and whether the authority of professional expertise is challenged by the spread of information. These debates underline that we know too little about how professional expertise is understood from the citizens’ point of view and how citizens decide whether or not to accept various types of expertise as authoritative. This article investigates professional authority understood as lay citizens’ willingness to follow certain types of professional advice. We argue that variation in professional authority can be explained by citizens’ evaluations of professional expertise and whether they perceive the tasks and problems addressed by professionals as having ‘legitimate complexity’. The analysis uses survey data from two countries, including vignettes on following advice in concrete everyday situations. We find legitimate complexity to be a strong predictor of professional authority although social status also plays a role.

普通民众如何理解和使用不同类型的知识，以及信息传播是否会挑战专业知识的权威，这引起了广泛的争论。这些辩论强调，我们对从公民的角度如何理解专业知识以及公民如何决定是否接受各种类型的专业知识作为权威了解得很少。本文调查了专业权威，这些专业权威被理解为是普通市民遵循某些类型的专业建议的意愿。我们认为，职业权威的变化可以通过公民对专业知识的评估以及他们是否认为专业人士解决的任务和问题具有“合法的复杂性”来解释。分析使用来自两个国家的调查数据，包括在日常具体情况下遵循以下建议的小插曲。尽管社会地位也发挥着作用，但我们发现合法的复杂性是专业权威的强有力的预测指标。