Meeting Notes
Key Takeaways from the Project
Background
As information from high-credibility sources is more readily believed, by whom information is conveyed can have significant impacts on public health and safety. However, less is known about the conditions of source credibility for scientists within the emotionally and morally-charged socio-scientific domains of climate change and health science.
Research Question
How do expertise (high vs. low) and trustworthiness (high vs. low) influence perceived source credibility of scientists?
Results
Results indicated that complex interactions between expertise and trustworthiness determined the perceived credibility of scientists.
- Expertise and trustworthiness each contributed to perceived credibility.
- Benevolence and integrity (two different types of trustworthiness) contribute differently to perceived credibility of scientists. Namely, research integrity had a stronger effect on credibility than did benevolence.
Notes from Discussion
What did the credibility scale look like?
- The scale was a 1-5 Likert-type scale
How much education did the sample have?
- The sample was from Prolific. 44% of them had obtained bachelor’s degrees.
- Discussion: Having university-level education might influence how people evaluate the credibility of scientists. Namely, students might have received more training as it relates to good scientific practice and what is involved. Thus, having a college degree might influence the relative weights of expertise, research integrity, and benevolence on credibility judgments.
To what extent are these results due to quirks of the stimuli?
- Because the stimuli included expertise, integrity, and benevolence information, participants may have assumed that this information was relevant and supposed to influence their judgments. Further research can investigate this. However, the purpose of the present study was to evaluate the relative influence of expertise, integrity, and benevolence. This particular question was addressed by this study.
To what extent might context influence expertise, benevolence, integrity, and overall credibility judgments?
- Discussion: The venue used to communicate this information (e.g. Twitter vs. television news) might further influence judgments. Historical context also has the potential to influence these judgments. Further, if the information came from that scientist themselves, people might interpret it differently. For example, if a scientist wrote in their bio that they were very helpful and spent all their time volunteering, it might be seen as fishy. Other context, such as the scientist’s affiliations might further complicate people’s judgments of their credibility.
Video
Click below to view the discussion on Youtube.