The Impact of Third-Party Information on Trust: Valence, Source, and Reliability
Fig 1
Predicted effects for the interaction of valence, source, and reliability in comparison to the baseline with no third-party information.
Fig 1 shows the predicted relative effects on trust for third-party information under different combinations of source and reliability. The triangles on the left side indicate increasing effect sizes in terms of placing trust (+) and withholding trust (-). Each line represents third-party information with a specific set of characteristics in terms of the source and reliability of the information. When both source and reliability operate in the same direction, effects should be relatively large in magnitude (e.g. friend tells experience) or relatively small in magnitude (e.g. stranger tells gossip). When source and reliability work in opposite directions (e.g. friend tells gossip or a stranger conveys an experience), relative effects cannot be predicted a priori. The baseline involves no third-party information.