A field guide to seeing through false expertise

Information overload is causing a credibility crisis. Paradoxically, reliable information has never been easier to access, but harder to find. With everyone from qualified experts to politicians, celebrities, and influencers entering their opinions into the chat, separating good information from bad feels like finding a needle in a haystack.

So in a world where social media has “democratized” information and opinion-sharing, who should we trust, and why? And what’s actually impacting our decision-making?

As a reformed social media addict and qualified marketing and business psychology professional, I know this challenge from the inside and out. I’ve spent 15 years of my career manufacturing influence to sell products and services to people on the internet, while simultaneously succumbing to the influence of the same types of campaigns I’ve designed. Ironic karma.

The internet has become a hotbed for the monetization of almost anything, and as media literacy is in decline — likely not as a result of laziness, but rather overwhelm — it’s never been easier to convert this overwhelm into sales. But there’s more to it than just the volume and velocity of information alone.

The volume and velocity of information

Research shows most adults spend upward of two hours per day on their mobile device — and this doesn’t include additional time spent online at work or via computers. While on your mobile device, you’re likely viewing social media content, which means you could be watching anywhere between dozens and hundreds of short-form pieces of information every day. When combined with other online habits — like checking the news and reading email newsletters — you’re likely spending a good four hours or more a day taking in information.

Contrast this with just two decades ago, when news and information were delivered in finite, periodic batches, like the 30-minute evening news or an article in the daily newspaper; your brain is now processing more in a 10-minute doomscroll than you would have in an entire week. Whether you realize it or not, that’s overwhelming.

When your brain becomes overwhelmed — called cognitive overload — it enters a protection mode and does one of two things: It attempts to manage this stress by shutting down to certain topics because they feel too complex to deal with, or becomes passive, going along with a popular view or opinion because it’s easier than thinking for yourself. By design, social media relies on this because as you reach cognitive overload, you begin outsourcing your agency and decision-making to others as your capacity to think and decide for yourself declines.

As a result, our susceptibility to fake news, misinformation, and consumeristic sales pitches increases. The volume and velocity of information is just the starting point — our overwhelm creates the perfect conditions for us to trust bad sources, but what do these bad information sources look like, and why are we turning to them?

Why we trust bad sources

The internet and social media have empowered many people to have a voice. Where previously traditional institutions like the news media and government held all the cards, social media has created a platform for absolutely everyone to be seen and heard — but that doesn’t mean they should be trusted.

Myriad factors contribute to who you choose to trust. Most of us feel we’re well-equipped to discern high-quality information from low-quality, but as new research into media literacy shows, this simply isn’t the case. Here are some of the reasons you get it wrong.

It’s easy to confuse performance with proof

Social media is a breeding ground for surface credibility: trust built on aesthetic polish, confident delivery, social proof, and perceived authority. But this same phenomenon also shows up in boardrooms, conference keynotes, investor decks, and news panels just as readily as it does in a 60-second Instagram reel. We have always been susceptible to trusting people who seem credible: people who speak with conviction, who carry themselves with authority, who look the part, and who are endorsed by others we already respect.

The internet — and more specifically, social media — has just industrialized this. The signals we once used to approximate trustworthiness — professional appearance, institutional affiliation, peer endorsement, confident delivery — are now easily manufactured at scale. They’re also slightly morphed: a polished personal brand, a large following, a verified badge, a bestseller tag — performances that our pattern-recognition brains tend to process as social proof, even if they’re only mimicking it.

Substantive credibility looks different. It’s generally less flashy, and as it doesn’t invoke shiny-object-syndrome, we generally overlook it. Substantive credibility is built on qualifications, peer-reviewed evidence, demonstrated track records, and — perhaps most tellingly — a willingness to say “it’s complicated.” Real experts accept complexity and aren’t afraid to acknowledge nuance: “the research suggests” rather than “the research proves.” This acknowledges uncertainty. It stays within its lane. It avoids reduction and oversimplification — the stuff we crave when we’re overwhelmed.

But confidence is not competence. The surface credibility markers we often fall for include follower counts and engagement metrics, oversimplified explanations, anecdote dressed as evidence, unearned certainty, purchased verification badges, virality and visibility mistaken for validity, experts operating outside their domain, and undisclosed financial incentives. And you’ll find all of these in media appearances, conference panels, and business publications — not just on your social media feed.

It’s not (just) cognitive biases at play

We’ve been taught that becoming aware of our cognitive biases helps us vet information sources with better perspective. And while this is true, it’s much harder than we think. This is because below the surface of our cognitive biases lies our identity — who we believe ourselves to be — and this is an incredibly powerful, and invisible, barrier that shapes what we believe and why.

Identity — how we see ourselves personally, professionally, politically, culturally — is one of the most powerful and least visible filters on what we choose to believe. When information aligns with who we are, we don’t scrutinize it. We absorb it. We believe it because it confirms what we believe about ourselves and the world. And when information challenges us, we reject it, often before we’ve genuinely engaged with the argument. This isn’t necessarily a flaw; it’s innate, but it’s fundamental in driving what you believe.

This plays out in consequential ways in professional life, too. A leader whose identity is built around being a visionary is more likely to uncritically adopt information that confirms their strategic direction and dismiss dissenting data as short-sighted. Remember the Google smart-glasses saga: Executive decisions that ignore expert opinion and remove the necessary friction for good decision-making can end in disaster. Likewise, a professional who identifies strongly with a particular school of thought — in economics, medicine, management, or technology — will tend to unconsciously favor sources that reinforce that framework and discount those that challenge it.

Political identity functions similarly, and increasingly bleeds into professional contexts. Research consistently shows that partisanship shapes how we evaluate factual claims across domains — from economic data to public health guidance, to what we see on social media — in ways that have nothing to do with the quality of the evidence itself. When a finding aligns with your political worldview, it feels credible. When it doesn’t, it feels suspect.

Our tribalism, in any form, compounds this further. Industries, disciplines, niche interest groups and organisations, to name a few, all develop their own epistemic cultures. These can be enormously productive, but they can also function as sophisticated echo chambers that make it structurally difficult to update beliefs, even in the face of strong contrary evidence.

The uncomfortable implication is that the most dangerous credibility failures are not the ones where we are obviously fooled by something implausible. They are the ones where we are already inclined to believe something, and surface credibility simply provides the justification we were already looking for. Even the most intelligent people can fool themselves in this way.

What you can do about it

You are not too gullible; your brain is functioning exactly as it evolved to — to process information using shortcuts to save you time and energy. Except nowadays, billions of dollars have been invested in hijacking and exploiting these very mental processes that we’ve evolutionarily developed over eons. But awareness is your leverage, and it’s the foundation of reclaiming your agency. Here’s how to start using it:

1. Pause when something feels immediately right. Strong feelings of certainty, relief, or vindication are often a signal that your identity has done the evaluating, not your critical thinking. That’s the moment to slow down, seek perspective and alternate viewpoints, not speed up.

2. Do your background checks — what makes this person qualified to speak on this topic? Not in general — specifically. Credibility doesn’t transfer across domains, and the willingness to operate outside one’s expertise is itself a credibility signal worth heeding. Look for substantive credibility: qualifications, experience, peer-reviewed research, and so on.

3. Build your comfort with complexity and nuance. Don’t settle for simple answers. Instead, seek insights and information that acknowledge complexity. Do people say “the research suggests” or “the research proves”? Do they sit comfortably with uncertainty? Humility is one of the most reliable markers of genuine expertise.

4. Separate the story from the evidence. Great stories feel compelling, but they don’t signal fact and are rarely replicable in research. If you’re feeling emotionally pulled to a person after hearing their story, that’s fine, but seek more evidence of expertise, rather than taking it at face value.

5. Check the incentive structure. Before trusting a recommendation — whether it comes from a consultant, a journalist, a thought leader, or an influencer — ask what they stand to gain from you believing them. Financial conflicts of interest are widespread; they’re not just limited to social media.

6. Notice when information flatters your existing views. Agreement without friction is worth interrogating. It can feel good when we feel validated in our opinions, but it’s important to reflect whether you’re genuinely evaluating the information or opinion, or simply recognising yourself in it. Don’t be afraid to hold this mirror up to yourself.

7. Seek out credible disconfirmation. A good scientist seeks to disprove their hypothesis by finding all the contrary evidence available. Make a practice of actively looking for high-quality sources that challenge your current position. Not to be contrarian, but because the most important updates to your thinking will rarely come from sources that already agree with you — this is simply feeding your confirmation bias.

The illusion of credibility — built through surface-level cues that mimic substantive credibility — is making it harder than ever to sort fact from fiction. And this extends well beyond just the dark corners of the internet. The volume and velocity with which information now hits us, paired with the innate meaning-making processes in our brain, have coalesced into the perfect storm. The question isn’t whether you’re susceptible to trusting surface credibility — you are — the question is whether you’re willing to slow down, interrogate your thought processes, and create habits that make you harder to fool.

This article is featured on Big Think.