Bias caused by the opinion of a famous person on matters they are not well-educated on?

Question

What is the name of the bias caused by the fame of a person on subject matters they are not experts on?

E.g: If a celebrity they like talks about climate change, people might tend to read, discuss, and follow their views as opposed to that of an educated climate scientist.

Related: Name of cognitive bias that causes experts to overestimate their ability in other areas? As I answered there, the 'appeal to false authority' fallacy is relevant. Albeit not labeled as a 'bias', these fallacies are labeled since they are common. — Steven Jeuris, Apr 26 '20 at 21:13
Also see: What is the name of the bias that associate a thing as good because it has a relation to another good thing? — Arnon Weinberg, Jan 27 '23 at 04:02

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 30 '22 at 09:55

See Wikipedia article "Argument from authority", section Appeal to false authority. That section notes an additional interesting angle, i.e., that it is also fallacious, in an ad hominem way, to discount someone's argument SOLELY because of who they are (even though we all know that "influencers" tend to opinionate ad nauseam, ad infinitum, and ad absurdum, as part of their PR strategies).

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 15 '20 at 14:23

I don't believe that there is a cognitive bias that has been accepted by the scientific community that fits your fact pattern. You can look for a matching cognitive bias yourself in this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect#Better-than-average_effects

I don't see one. In fact, I don't even think people would believe a celebrity over an educated climate scientist on the current status of climate change. It may help the person remember the ad or public announcement because a celebrity was the one to announce it but I doubt the credibility of the celebrity exceeds that of the scientist.

Bias caused by the opinion of a famous person on matters they are not well-educated on?

2 Answers2