Abstract
“Experts can be trusted” is one of the most prominent heuristics in heuristic and accordingly peripheral processing of information. As political discussions are really hard to follow without professional background citizens are dependent on heuristic cues to form a personal political judgement. The validity of the expert-heuristic for the political context - especially the discussion of reform-plans - was tested in two experimental studies. Both experiments compare typical communicators of reform-messages and their influence on citizen’s judgement of discussed measures. Surprisingly people react with resistance and refusal to experts as communicators. Reactance and low perceived similarity of experts in relation to participants’ own point of view mediated this effect. Loss of experts’ credibility against the background of using experts to underline particular political views and differences in point of view will be discussed. “Do not longer trust experts when discussing political reform issues?”
Translated title of the contribution | Do Citizens Still Trust Experts when Discussing Political Reform Issues? |
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Original language | German |
Pages (from-to) | 35-45 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Wirtschaftspsychologie |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 4 |
Publication status | Published - 2007 |
Keywords
- persuasive communication
- heuristic information-processing
- peripheral information- processing
- expert-heuristic
- political reforms
Fields of Science and Technology Classification 2012
- 501 Psychology