Experts play a crucial role in modern organizations, but evidence regarding the soundness and reliability of their decision-making is mixed and often contradictory. We develop and test a moderated-mediation model of expert decision-making linking expertise, identity threat, and overprecision to understand when and why experts offer overly precise judgments, and how they can cope with disconfirming feedback. We find support for this model in a series of lab experiments which show that (a) experts are more likely than novices to double-down and produce overly precise predictions following disconfirming feedback; (b) this feedback-induced overprecision by experts is mediated by perceived level of expert identity threat; (c) the source of the feedback matter for identity threat and overprecision; and (d) self-affirmation attenuates identity threat and reduces overprecision. We supplement these experimental findings by investigating experts’ response to disconfirming feedback in two real-world settings: Major League Baseball umpiring and Chief Financial Officer predictions of stock market returns. Our model and results show that feedback can harm expert decision making by leading experts to be overly precise in their judgment, challenging existing notions on the ability of expert decision-makers, and providing insight into when and why experts should be relied upon in organizational decisions.

中文翻译：

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专家的脆弱性：专业知识、专家身份威胁和过度精确的适度中介模型

专家在现代组织中发挥着至关重要的作用，但有关其决策合理性和可靠性的证据不一，而且往往相互矛盾。我们开发并测试了专家决策的适度中介模型，将专业知识、身份威胁和过度精确联系起来，以了解专家何时以及为何提供过于精确的判断，以及他们如何应对不肯定的反馈。我们在一系列实验室实验中找到了对该模型的支持，这些实验表明（a）专家比新手更有可能在否定反馈后加倍努力并产生过于精确的预测；(b) 这种由反馈引起的专家过分精确是由专家身份威胁的感知水平调节的；(c) 身份威胁和过度精确的反馈事项的来源；(d) 自我肯定会减弱身份威胁并减少过度精确。我们通过调查专家对两种现实环境中否定反馈的反应来补充这些实验结果：美国职业棒球大联盟裁判和首席财务官对股市回报的预测。我们的模型和结果表明，由于领先专家的判断过于精确，反馈可能会损害专家决策，挑战对专家决策者能力的现有观念，并深入了解何时以及为何在组织决策中应该依赖专家.