Authority cues and metacognitive miscalibration in linguistic judgment: evidence from an English–Chinese revision paradigm

Chen Chen, Ning Ren, Zikai Guo

Introduction Linguistic judgment rarely occurs in a social vacuum. This study examined whether social authority cues reshape the alignment between confidence and decision accuracy, known as metacognitive calibration, and subsequently influence linguistic revision behavior. Methods Using an English-Chinese revision paradigm, participants evaluated translation segments labeled as produced by an “expert,” a “peer,” or an anonymous source. We examined perceived source credibility, linguistic quality judgment, metacognitive calibration, and revision behavior, including under-editing of erroneous segments and over-editing of acceptable segments. Results Authority cues significantly influenced perceived credibility and linguistic quality judgments. Expert labels increased overconfidence when participants evaluated erroneous segments and were associated with a higher likelihood of under-editing. Conversely, peer labels induced skepticism and were associated with unnecessary revisions to acceptable segments. Mediation analysis indicated that calibration bias partly accounted for the associations between authority labels and revision behavior. However, because confidence and revision decisions were measured within the same segment-level task, these indirect effects should be interpreted as statistically consistent explanatory pathways rather than definitive evidence of temporally ordered causal mechanisms. Discussion Social authority cues may affect not only linguistic judgments but also individuals' monitoring of the reliability of those judgments. These findings demonstrate the vulnerability of metacognitive calibration to source information and provide a psychological framework for understanding biased intervention in professional communication.