User:CarlaSP13993/Prosocial Behavior

Expert Power (Social Psychology, Psychology) is a term coined by the social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven in a study of power (French and Raven's bases of power) in 1959. Expert power refers to the capacity to influence that comess from one's presumed wisdom or knowledge. It is a form of social influence that comes from acknowledged competence in the given subject , and results from the target’s faith that the agent has some superior insight or knowledge about what behavior is best (e.g. trusting a doctor to make medical decisions because they have more knowledge in the subject of medicine than you do, even though you do not know the extent of their expert knowledge). Expertise in a certain field can be demonstrated by credentials reflecting the expert's previously-assumed knowledge, reputation of the expert, and actions that demonstrate expertise (whether true or false). If someone is being influenced by a presumed expert (meaning, the "expert" can have no expertise at all, but just demonstrate what is perceived to be expertise) because they assume that the presumed expert knows more in the subject area than they do, they are being influenced by expert power. Expert power was demonstrated in the extreme in the Milgram Shock Experiment on obedience to authority figures.

Milgram's shock experiment in relation to expert power

While the Milgram experiment focused on how subjects would respond to directives from authority figures (even as they were under the impression that they were causing intense pain and even death to another participant of the study), it also demonstrates expert power. In Stanley Milgram's experiment, participants were told by an "expert authority figure" to repeatedly administer electric shocks of increasing intensity to a confederate who was believed to be another participant of the study. While Milgram's shock experiment focused on how subjects responded to directives from authority figures, it also demonstrated that people with assumed authority ("experts" who had more knowledge than the study participant) were obeyed simply based on their authority as an "expert figure". This is an example of obedience to authority and influence via expert power, since participants of the study were influenced by a person claiming to be an expert, and trusted the expert's opinion. A real-life example of this is whenever a toothpaste brand advertises that "Four out of five dentists choose this brand". By using the expert power of a dentist you influence consumers (who believe the dentist is an expert on choosing toothpastes) to buy the toothpaste.