The curse of expertise: The effects of expertise and debiasing methods on predictions of novice performance

Experts are often called on to predict the performance of novices, but cogn itive heuristics may interfere with experts' ability to capitalize on their superior knowledge in predicting novice task performance. In Study 1, expe rts, intermediate users, and novices predicted the time it would take novic es to complete a complex task. In Study 2, expertise was experimentally man ipulated. In both studies, those with more expertise were worse predictors of novice performance times and were resistant to debiasing techniques inte nded to reduce underestimation. Findings from these studies suggest that ex perts may have a cognitive handicap that leads to underestimating the diffi culty novices face and that those with an intermediate level of expertise m ay be more accurate in predicting novices' performance.