The effect of congruous and incongruous source-statement combinations upon the judged credibility of a communication

Abstract

This experiment was designed to determine whether a statement would be judged more truthful if made by an author whose ideological position was known or thought to be contrary to that expressed in the statement. In the study, the interaction of Source Presence (or Absence) with Statement Congruity (or Incongruity) was of primary interest. Over two sources, the general hypothesis that incongruous Source-Statement combinations would be more credible was confirmed. Contrary to previous studies, the results indicated that this credibility increment was independent of changes in source evaluation. The "enhancement of credibility by incongruous Source-Statement pairings" did not generalize to later items. Possible explanations for the obtained credibility and evaluation effects are offered.