Lay Theories of Expertise: A Mixed‐Methods Exploration
通过五项研究（自由回答、社交媒体分析、词语分类及两项实验）发现，人们关于专业知识含义的个人信念（外行理论）会影响他们对专家的识别，且这种信念与专家行为的一致程度会改变性别刻板印象等心理表征的作用。
Abstract Failure to engage with expertise underpins many organizational and societal problems. Despite decades of research on expertise, we still do not fully understand why such failures persist, and there is a sense that these failures are becoming a crisis of expertise. In this article, we highlight a person's system of beliefs about the meaning of expertise – what we term their lay theory of expertise (LTE) – as an important factor for understanding their engagement with expertise. Through a free response study (Study 1), analysis of social media data (Study 2), and word sorting study (Study 3), we first develop a taxonomy of common LTE elements. We then examine how LTEs affect expert recognition via two experiments with managers (Studies 4 and 5). Study 4 reveals that congruence between the most psychologically active element of a person's lay theory and expert conduct is conducive to expert recognition, while Study 5 highlights that (in)congruence between LTEs and expert conduct can alter how other mental representations (such as gender stereotypes) shape expert recognition. Our work provides a conceptual foundation for exploring variation in the subjective meaning of expertise in future research on expert recognition and engagement, both within and beyond organizations.