Choices and persuasion
Authority bias
Also called Authority principle
People give more weight to the views of experts and authority figures, and are more likely to follow their lead.
Credentials, uniforms, titles and logos all signal expertise, and people use them as a shortcut to decide whom to believe.
Genuine authority helps people trust a product: a recognised certification, a quote from a real expert, the logos of organisations that really use it.
In practice
A health app that shows which doctors reviewed its content tends to be trusted more than one that doesn't say.
Common mistake
Borrowed authority: a stock photo in a lab coat, an award nobody has heard of, or logos of companies that tried the product once.
Where it comes from
Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments in 1963 showed how far people follow an authority figure. Robert Cialdini made authority a principle of influence in Influence (1984).