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

ABSTRACT:

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.

SUBMITTER: Witchel HJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9121982 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature