Abstract:

Source credibility has very complex implications in social interactions, communication, persuasion and negotiation (Hovland, Janis & Kelley, 1953; Sternthal, Phillips & Dholakia, 1978). The aim of this paper is to study the impact of source credibility in decision-making processes. Two experimental studies (with 91, and 136 subjects) were conducted to demonstrate that in decision situations, the subjects choose the alternative indicated by the high credible source and are more influenced by the source credibility than by the message formulation (the arguments). Only the subjects in high need for cognition chose the strong argument, allocated a longer time to deliberate upon the alternatives and were less influenced by the information received from the high credible source. Our study also shows that the subject's confidence in high credible sources increases when the number of sources from which they can receive information decreases. As an experimental task we used two decision situations which were solved by the theoretical approach of game theory. As other studies have already shown (Mellers, Schwartz & Cooke, 1998; Rorhrbaugh & Shanteau, 1999) we found discrepancies between the normative and the descriptive approach of the decision situations.

Keywords: decision-making, source credibility