Trust in Congruent Sources, Absolutely: The Moderating Effects of Ideological and Epistemological Beliefs on the Relationship between Perceived Source Congruency and News Credibility

ABSTRACT

This study explores the moderating effects that ideological and epistemological beliefs have on the relationship between perceived news source congruency and ratings of news credibility. Findings from an online experiment with a US sample (N = 429) show that news from a perceived ideologically congruent source is seen as being more credible than news from an ideologically incongruent source. Stronger ideological beliefs exacerbate this effect. Epistemological beliefs also moderate this effect. The more that individuals view the nature of knowledge and knowing in certain, black-and-white terms, the more likely they are to rate political news from an ideologically congruent source as credible. On the other hand, the more evaluative that individuals’ views on the nature of knowledge and knowing are, the more likely they are to rate political news from a neutral source as credible. Findings raise normative concerns regarding the ready acceptance of agreeable information yet also point to a potential path toward mitigating this problem: fostering critical, evaluative thinking.

KEYWORDS:

• News credibility
• political ideology
• epistemology
• epistemological beliefs
• source congruency

Conflict of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Pre-test participants were 62% independent or independent leaning Democrat/Republican and 66% moderate or moderate leaning liberal/conservative.

2 See supplementary materials for additional notes on measures of attitudes toward journalists and how these were used in additional analyses.

3 Supplementary materials contain the results of analyses performed without those individuals who incorrectly identified their randomly-assigned, with results being consistent. They also contain analyses where individuals who incorrectly identified their randomly-assigned source are coded as having seen a neutral source – an approach which takes into consideration a possible lack of cognitive awareness of the source. This approach also yields consistent results.

4 Results also hold when those incorrectly identifying their randomly-assigned source are removed from analyses (see supplementary materials).

5 Results also hold for the ideology x congruent interaction when those incorrectly identifying their randomly-assigned source are removed from analyses (see supplementary materials).

6 Results also hold when those incorrectly identifying their randomly-assigned source are removed from analyses (see supplementary materials).

7 Results also hold when those incorrectly identifying their randomly-assigned source are removed from analyses (see supplementary materials). Moreover, supplementary materials contain a hierarchical regression models where individuals’ epistemological beliefs control for one another.

8 Strength of ideology and absolutist epistemological beliefs were significantly correlated in this study, r(427) = .125, p < .01. However, this correlation did not pose any collinearity issues in models.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection was supported by a grant from Michigan State University.