Spelling Errors and “Shouting” Capitalisation Implicitly Cause Linearly Additive Penalties to Trustworthiness Judgements of Online Health Information: Online Randomised Experiments with Laypersons
Authors: Witchel, H.J., Jones, C.I., Westling, C.E.I., Nicotra, A., Maag, B. and Critchley, H.D.
Pages: 471-492
DOI: 10.1007/978-981-96-1289-5_23
Abstract:How people make assessments of trustworthiness remains controversial, as several factors may inflect such assessments and subsequent decisions. This research programme aims to reveal implicit trustworthiness judgements specifically caused by spelling errors and online “shouting” (unnecessary capitalisation of whole words for emphasis). In a series of online experiments, participants were instructed to rate the trustworthiness of the content of nine short text excerpts about multiple sclerosis in the format of posts to an unmoderated health forum. In randomised, counterbalanced designs, some excerpts had no typographic errors, some had spelling errors, some had shouting text, and some had both types of unconventionalities. In linear mixed effects models, unconventionality number or type was coded as a fixed effect. Participants-encoded as random effects to correct statistically for repeated measures from individuals-rated the text samples by marking their judgement of trustworthiness on an unnumbered slider scale. The resulting data showed that multiple unconventionalities caused linearly additive penalties to trustworthiness. Adding more spelling errors caused lower trustworthiness ratings, and spelling errors plus shouting text caused additive trustworthiness penalties. Thus, when participants rated brief scientific information in this context, they implicitly assigned to unconventionalities linearly additive trustworthiness penalties. This contravenes a dichotomous heuristic or local ceiling effect on trustworthiness penalties. It supports an integrative cost-benefit model that includes insight into one’s psychological judgements of trustworthiness.
Source: Scopus