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Influence of the first impression on credibility evaluation of online information

Goltz, N.G. von der (2012) Influence of the first impression on credibility evaluation of online information.

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Abstract:With the success story of the internet during recent years and more and more people gaining information from a wide diversity and variety of websites (an estimated 644 million in 2012 according to Netcraft), credibility evaluation of online information has become an area of interest. On the other hand, within the field of cognitive psychology, a lot of research was done on the first impression to get to know which aspects play a role in judgment of information. This study combines these two fields and examines the influence of the first impression on credibility evaluation of online information. Furthermore, the 3S-model of credibility evaluation developed by Lucassen and Schraagen (2011) was integrated in the study. In this study, participants evaluated Wikipedia articles of different quality and familiarity in two time conditions; one short time condition lasting five seconds, and one long time condition lasting 5 minutes. In this study, it was found out that when forming a first impression about an online article, more surface features than semantic features are applied for peoples’ trust. However, in this study, the previous experience with Wikipedia as a source of online information had no influence on the trust in the articles of the study. Furthermore, quality manipulation revealed that peoples’ trust is higher in the long time condition than in the short time condition for high-quality articles, but not for low-quality articles. No effect of time and familiarity on trust was found. However, an effect of quality on trust was found.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/62354
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