Lay concepts of source likeability, trustworthiness, expertise, and power: A prototype analysis
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Lay concepts of source likeability, trustworthiness, expertise, and power: A prototype analysis Laura E. Wallace 1
&
Kay A. Simon 2 & Duane T. Wegener 1
Accepted: 2 September 2020 # The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract Previous research on persuasion has used researcher-generated exemplars to manipulate source characteristics such as likeability, trustworthiness, expertise, or power. This approach has been fruitful, but it relies to some degree on an overlap between researcher understanding of these variables and lay understanding of these variables. Additionally, these exemplar manipulations may have unintentionally affected multiple characteristics and may be limited to certain topics or time periods. In the current work, we sought to provide persuasion researchers with a methodological tool to increase construct and potentially external validity by conducting a prototype analysis of the four traditional source characteristics: likeability, trustworthiness, expertise, and power. This bottom-up approach provided insight into the ways in which recipients perceive sources and allowed us to examine relations between the characteristics. Moving forward, a bottom-up understanding of source characteristics will allow researchers to more effectively develop manipulations that might transcend time and topic as well as isolate their effects to the intended source characteristic. Keywords Persuasion . Sources . Likeability . Trustworthiness . Expertise . Power
When people receive persuasive messages, they often attend to features of the source providing the message. They can pay attention to whether a salesperson is likeability, a corporation providing an advertisement is truthful, an advocate is knowledgeable about her cause, or a political candidate has power to enact the policies she endorses. The way they perceive these sources could ultimately determine the extent to which they are persuaded. Indeed, since the beginning of persuasion science, researchers have identified source characteristics as one of the core factors that affect persuasion (e.g., Hovland, Janis, and Kelley 1953; Kelman and Hovland 1953). In this early work, Kelman (1958) taxonomized source perceptions into attractiveness (likeability), trustworthiness, expertise, and power. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01478-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Laura E. Wallace [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
2
Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
Kelman discussed attractiveness as the extent to which other people liked the source. Some manipulations of source attractiveness have used physical characteristics (e.g., Snyder and Rothbart, 1971), whereas others have used qualities that might make the source likeability or dislikeability in other ways such as celebrity versus average-joe status, politeness versus impoliteness, or
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