“We tentatively suggest that the verbal skills, which are developed around wine, perhaps lead to a somewhat similar overestimation of confidence in expertise,” the researchers write. They’re hinting that knowing many words to describe wine makes people think they’re better at identifying it than they really are. So go strong to the hoop with that wine list next time you’re at a fancy restaurant, because the odds are the sommelier isn’t a whole lot better at discriminating among wines than you are.
