Do experts always tell it like it is?

What is it about?

Storytelling or giving causal meaning to our experiences beyond a mere chronology and with the attribution of unity, motive, credit and blame to others is our dominant mode of thinking and explanation. Compared to the scientific mode of universal laws and statistical probabilities explaining individual events, storytelling generates more meaningful and affective albeit scientifically less accurate accounts of our lives, enabling us to share experiences and triggering collective action. In this article in memory of late sociologist Charles Tilly, I explored how our roles and identities in society and organisations influence the way we explain experiences. I did this in the context of financial markets, which are characterised by uncertainty and high stakes. What I found is that when explaining adverse events, market experts and regulators resorted to accounts that resemble storytelling - namely, attributing unity, motive, blame and credit to others at the expense of accuracy and facts. They did so to hide the organisational shortcomings, hierarchies and conflicts in which they were embroiled.

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Why is it important?

Charles Tilly studied people's storytelling and argued that experts and professional groups used technical accounts when they communicated with each other, and superior stories when they communicated with ordinary people. For Tilly, at the end of the causal explanatory spectrum lied the standard stories of ordinary people who attributed unity, motive, credit and blame to others at the expense of scientific and technical knowledge and accuracy. While Tilly's identity-based categories on causal explanations are useful, they ignore the effects of societal and organisational competition and conflict and how experts and professional groups feature in these. Experts and professionals are not immune to the effects of competition and conflict, and at times their involvement in these influences the way they tell or don't tell it like it is.