Beyond Neutrality: Experimental Evidence on Preferences for Diversity within Expert Panels

Expert panels are often central to policymaking, but are typically seen as monolithic, elite bodies. Do more diverse expert panels elicit greater trust from publics? Across two pre-registered between-subjects vignette experiments in the UK (Study 1: N = 2,503; Study 2: 3,500), we manipulate socioeconomic diversity – using panel members’ cities and towns of origin – and cognitive diversity – i.e. the range of disciplinary profiles included in the panel. We find that both socioeconomic and cognitive diversity significantly increase trust in expert panels. But these gains are not uniform: they attenuate among right-leaning respondents, while participants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds report lower baseline trust overall. Our results suggest technocratic legitimacy does not rest on neutrality alone. Ensuring experts bring varying social locations and professional perspectives improves how citizens evaluate expert-led policymaking. We discuss implications for designing expert committees, and argue that signaling heterogeneity preserves the democratic credibility of expertise without compromising epistemic integrity.