How laypeople evaluate scientific explanations containing jargon

Francisco Cruz () and Tania Lombrozo
Additional contact information
Francisco Cruz: Universidade de Lisboa
Tania Lombrozo: Princeton University

Nature Human Behaviour, 2025, vol. 9, issue 10, 2038-2053

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02227-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:9:y:2025:i:10:d:10.1038_s41562-025-02227-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02227-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().