Cargando…

Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness

BACKGROUND: Spelling errors in documents lead to reduced trustworthiness, but the mechanism for weighing the psychological assessment (i.e., integrative versus dichotomous) has not been elucidated. We instructed participants to rate content of texts, revealing that their implicit trustworthiness jud...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Witchel, Harry J., Jones, Christopher I., Thompson, Georgina A., Westling, Carina E. I., Romero, Juan, Nicotra, Alessia, Maag, Bruno, Critchley, Hugo D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9121982/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35602734
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.873844
_version_ 1784711257592430592
author Witchel, Harry J.
Jones, Christopher I.
Thompson, Georgina A.
Westling, Carina E. I.
Romero, Juan
Nicotra, Alessia
Maag, Bruno
Critchley, Hugo D.
author_facet Witchel, Harry J.
Jones, Christopher I.
Thompson, Georgina A.
Westling, Carina E. I.
Romero, Juan
Nicotra, Alessia
Maag, Bruno
Critchley, Hugo D.
author_sort Witchel, Harry J.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Spelling errors in documents lead to reduced trustworthiness, but the mechanism for weighing the psychological assessment (i.e., integrative versus dichotomous) has not been elucidated. We instructed participants to rate content of texts, revealing that their implicit trustworthiness judgments show marginal differences specifically caused by spelling errors. METHODS: An online experiment with 100 English-speaking participants were asked to rate 27 short text excerpts (∼100 words) about multiple sclerosis in the format of unmoderated health forum posts. In a counterbalanced design, some excerpts had no typographic errors, some had two errors, and some had five errors. Each participant rated nine paragraphs with a counterbalanced mixture of zero, two or five errors. A linear mixed effects model (LME) was assessed with error number as a fixed effect and participants as a random effect. RESULTS: Using an unnumbered scale with anchors of “completely untrustworthy” (left) and “completely trustworthy” (right) recorded as 0 to 100, two spelling errors resulted in a penalty to trustworthiness of 5.91 ± 1.70 (robust standard error) compared to the reference excerpts with zero errors, while the penalty for five errors was 13.5 ± 2.47; all three conditions were significantly different from each other (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Participants who rated information about multiple sclerosis in a context mimicking an online health forum implicitly assigned typographic errors nearly linearly additive trustworthiness penalties. This contravenes any dichotomous heuristic or local ceiling effect on trustworthiness penalties for these numbers of typographic errors. It supports an integrative model for psychological judgments of trustworthiness.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9121982
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-91219822022-05-21 Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness Witchel, Harry J. Jones, Christopher I. Thompson, Georgina A. Westling, Carina E. I. Romero, Juan Nicotra, Alessia Maag, Bruno Critchley, Hugo D. Front Psychol Psychology BACKGROUND: Spelling errors in documents lead to reduced trustworthiness, but the mechanism for weighing the psychological assessment (i.e., integrative versus dichotomous) has not been elucidated. We instructed participants to rate content of texts, revealing that their implicit trustworthiness judgments show marginal differences specifically caused by spelling errors. METHODS: An online experiment with 100 English-speaking participants were asked to rate 27 short text excerpts (∼100 words) about multiple sclerosis in the format of unmoderated health forum posts. In a counterbalanced design, some excerpts had no typographic errors, some had two errors, and some had five errors. Each participant rated nine paragraphs with a counterbalanced mixture of zero, two or five errors. A linear mixed effects model (LME) was assessed with error number as a fixed effect and participants as a random effect. RESULTS: Using an unnumbered scale with anchors of “completely untrustworthy” (left) and “completely trustworthy” (right) recorded as 0 to 100, two spelling errors resulted in a penalty to trustworthiness of 5.91 ± 1.70 (robust standard error) compared to the reference excerpts with zero errors, while the penalty for five errors was 13.5 ± 2.47; all three conditions were significantly different from each other (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Participants who rated information about multiple sclerosis in a context mimicking an online health forum implicitly assigned typographic errors nearly linearly additive trustworthiness penalties. This contravenes any dichotomous heuristic or local ceiling effect on trustworthiness penalties for these numbers of typographic errors. It supports an integrative model for psychological judgments of trustworthiness. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9121982/ /pubmed/35602734 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.873844 Text en Copyright © 2022 Witchel, Jones, Thompson, Westling, Romero, Nicotra, Maag and Critchley. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Witchel, Harry J.
Jones, Christopher I.
Thompson, Georgina A.
Westling, Carina E. I.
Romero, Juan
Nicotra, Alessia
Maag, Bruno
Critchley, Hugo D.
Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness
title Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness
title_full Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness
title_fullStr Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness
title_full_unstemmed Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness
title_short Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness
title_sort spelling errors in brief computer-mediated texts implicitly lead to linearly additive penalties in trustworthiness
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9121982/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35602734
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.873844
work_keys_str_mv AT witchelharryj spellingerrorsinbriefcomputermediatedtextsimplicitlyleadtolinearlyadditivepenaltiesintrustworthiness
AT joneschristopheri spellingerrorsinbriefcomputermediatedtextsimplicitlyleadtolinearlyadditivepenaltiesintrustworthiness
AT thompsongeorginaa spellingerrorsinbriefcomputermediatedtextsimplicitlyleadtolinearlyadditivepenaltiesintrustworthiness
AT westlingcarinaei spellingerrorsinbriefcomputermediatedtextsimplicitlyleadtolinearlyadditivepenaltiesintrustworthiness
AT romerojuan spellingerrorsinbriefcomputermediatedtextsimplicitlyleadtolinearlyadditivepenaltiesintrustworthiness
AT nicotraalessia spellingerrorsinbriefcomputermediatedtextsimplicitlyleadtolinearlyadditivepenaltiesintrustworthiness
AT maagbruno spellingerrorsinbriefcomputermediatedtextsimplicitlyleadtolinearlyadditivepenaltiesintrustworthiness
AT critchleyhugod spellingerrorsinbriefcomputermediatedtextsimplicitlyleadtolinearlyadditivepenaltiesintrustworthiness