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.

 

[Leifer]

Building off this topic, in June 2018, PEW Research conducted a study titled,
"Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News" (pdf)
(website version here)
This survey/study is a little old, but may still hold value.
Note: this uses only American participants.

(from the overview)

"In today's fast-paced and complex information environment, news
consumers must make rapidfire judgments about how to
internalize news-related
statements – statements that often come in snippets and through pathways that
provide little context.

A new Pew Research Center survey
of 5,035 U.S. adults examines
a basic step in that process:
whether members of the
public can recognize news as
factual – something that's
capable of being proved or
disproved by objective
evidence – or as an opinion
that reflects the beliefs and
values of whoever expressed
it."

The participants were categorized into groups, based on each participants' self-identified/evaluated levels of:
Political Awareness (high/low)
Digital Saviness (high/low)
News Trust (high trust/low trust)
News Interest (more interested/less interested)
Also: political affiliations, gender, age, and more, were noted overall.

One part of the study presented the participants with 5 factual statements and 5 opinion statements, and they were asked to spot (identify) each statement as factual, or opinion.
Below are some results, particularly interesting is how many people were able to correctly spot every statement as fact or opinion.

Here is a short video explaining it, as well.

Source: https://youtu.be/szBhN17gws0?si=NobnatFPxJuRfFQx

 

[Ann K]

This survey/study is a little old, but may still hold value.
Note: this uses only American participants.

If the survey were conducted in the wide political schism of today's America, I would expect the deciding factor might be the particular party of both speaker and listener. "Facts" have been decided by fiat in the current administration with no regard for accuracy. They've declared such things as "Chemtrails are a problem", "There are only two sexes", and "There is no such thing as global warming", all decided by people who do not have the expertise to make factual statements in those fields, but by people who want to get votes, and thus want to reflect the views of the ignorant back to them.

 

[FatPhil]

Building off this topic, in June 2018, PEW Research conducted a study titled,
"Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News" (pdf)
(website version here)

Some discussion on that survey here:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/opinion-vs-fact.12649/