Scientists warn: don't trust experts
Scientists warn: don't trust experts

Video: Scientists warn: don't trust experts

Video: Scientists warn: don't trust experts
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The popular wisdom "Trust but verify" is becoming very relevant today. Do not blindly believe the advice of experts, urges American professor Gregory Burns. According to the scientist, listening to authoritative reasoning, a person runs the risk of completely suppressing the areas of the brain responsible for making decisions. And this is especially important when solving financial issues.

In the face of a global economic recession and great uncertainty, it makes sense that many people tend to entrust their financial decisions to outside experts. But this is exactly what you should not do, says Professor Gregory Burns of Emory University, USA.

"While scientists are well aware of the fundamentals of the neuroscience process of making risky financial decisions in the human brain, until now, no one knew how additional information in the form of professional advice from the outside affects such brain activity," Burns told the press office of Emory University.

To confirm his theory, the scientist conducted an experiment in which volunteers were asked to make a series of financial decisions between receiving a guaranteed income or participating in a lottery. In the process of making some of these decisions, people received advice from financial experts or made completely independent decisions, and the volunteers' brains were continuously scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging, writes RIA Novosti.

“In our experiment, experts often offered very conservative financial solutions that did not allow participants to get the maximum profit, but people did exactly what the experts say, because their own decision-making system was simply turned off,” says economist Monica Capra, a co-author of Burns.

Scientists are sure that this feature of the human brain completely relinquishes responsibility for decisions made under the influence of an authoritative opinion can play into the hands of a large number of incompetent or dishonest financial experts.

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