Search results for "epistemic trust"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Using Power as a Negative Cue: How Conspiracy Mentality Affects Epistemic Trust in Sources of Historical Knowledge.
2018
Classical theories of attitude change point to the positive effect of source expertise on perceived source credibility persuasion, but there is an ongoing societal debate on the increase in anti-elitist sentiments and conspiracy theories regarding the allegedly untrustworthy power elite. In one correlational ( N = 275) and three experimental studies ( N = 195, N = 464, N = 225), we tested the novel idea that people who endorse a conspiratorial mind-set (conspiracy mentality) indeed exhibit markedly different reactions to cues of epistemic authoritativeness than those who do not: Whereas the perceived credibility of powerful sources decreased with the recipients' conspiracy mentality, that o…
Keep Calm in Heated Debates: How People Perceive Different Styles of Discourse in a Scientific Debate
2021
Scientific debates are, in an epistemological sense, argumentative approaches aimed at coming to the most appropriate conclusion. However, as these debates sometimes involve interpersonal rather than content-driven attacks (e.g., an argument between scientific experts might involve personal dislike), the following question arises: How do such communication behaviors affect people’s perception of the argument? In an empirical study, we presented prospective teachers (N = 222) with a newspaper article about two scientific experts controversially discussing the pros and cons of a fictional vocabulary training program. Using a 1 × 2 between-subject design, the article contained either a neutral…