Help find: study on believability based on who is telling a story, or the truth ?

[Leifer]

Help me find....
Somewhere, I read a book citing a study that ranked the audiences' believability (truth) of a lecture/speech, based on the confidence of the presenter/speaker.
In other words, two seperate audiences listen to a lecture about an obscure topic, with different presenters.

One presenter is confident and engaging, but telling lies.
Other presenter is slow and boring, but is telling truths.

If I remember correctly, the audience preferred to believe the lying presenter.

 

[Todd Feinman]

Is this the study?

Speaker trustworthiness: Shall confidence match evidence?
Mélinda Pozzi & Diana Mazzarella

"ABSTRACT Overconfidence is typically damaging to one's reputation as a trustworthy source of information. Previous research shows that the reputational cost associated with conveying a piece of false information is higher for confident than unconfident speakers. When judging speaker trustworthiness, individuals do not exclusively rely on past accuracy but consider the extent to which speakers expressed a degree of confidence that matched the accuracy of their claims (their "confidence- accuracy calibration"). The present study experimentally examines the interplay between confidence, accuracy and a third factor, namely evidence, in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. Experiment 1 probes the hypothesis that overconfidence does not backfire when a confident but inaccurate claim is justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be wrong is restored if the conf idence expressed is based on strong evidence (good conf idence-evidence calibration). Experiment 2 investigates the hypothesis that confidence can backfire if a confident and accurate claim is not justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be right is damaged if the confidence expressed is based on weak evidence (bad confidence-evidence calibration). Our results support both hypotheses and thus suggest that "confidence-evidence calibration" plays a crucial role in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness."
Link:
https://philarchive.org/archive/POZSTS-2v3

 

[Leifer]

That certainly fits !
I never read the study I was speaking about. It was just described in an audio book.
Thanks.

 

[Todd Feinman]

That certainly fits !
I never read the study I was speaking about. It was just described in an audio book.
Thanks.

You bet. Glad to hear it!

 

[FatPhil]

One presenter is confident and engaging, but ...
Other presenter is slow and boring, but ...

Just from that description, I'm trusting the latter.

Then again, one of my most boring lecturers finds his name on the tree of dependencies that led to the proof of the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture, and other stuff that followed therefrom.