source expertise
Definition
Source expertise refers to a dimension of source credibility grounded in the notion of epistemic authority, encompassing characteristics such as seniority, professional activities, and education that shape individuals' reliance on and acceptance of information from a given source. It is conceptually distinct from trustworthiness and perceived source bias, though the three dimensions are related and can co-occur, and persuasion research has devoted considerable effort to disentangling their separate effects. In misinformation contexts, source expertise has been operationalised inconsistently across studies, contributing to discrepant findings that stand in contrast to the relatively stable effects observed in the persuasion literature. The absence of a systematic theoretical framework for source credibility in misinformation research has made it difficult to determine when and for whom expertise cues reliably affect cognitive outcomes such as perceived accuracy.
Sources: Mang et al. (2024)
Related Terms
- misinformation (1 shared article)
- persuasion (1 shared article)
- source credibility (1 shared article)
- source trustworthiness (1 shared article)
- source bias (1 shared article)
Applications
Source Expertise and Source Trustworthiness
Source expertise and source trustworthiness are treated as distinct dimensions of the broader source credibility construct, each capable of exerting separate effects on recipients' responses to information. A source can be simultaneously perceived as trustworthy and biased, which illustrates that these dimensions do not reduce to a single underlying judgment. Misinformation research has frequently conflated these dimensions rather than examining them independently, a practice that the persuasion literature, with its more developed theoretical frameworks, has largely avoided.
Sources: Mang et al. (2024)
Source Expertise and Perceived Accuracy
Source credibility, including its expertise dimension, is more consistently associated with cognitive outcomes such as perceived accuracy than with behavioural outcomes such as sharing intentions. This pattern suggests that expertise cues influence how individuals evaluate the truth of a claim but do not translate as reliably into downstream behavioural responses. The field has yet to fully examine moderators that could account for when and why expertise affects perceived accuracy.
Sources: Mang et al. (2024)
Source Expertise and Cognitive Elaboration
Source expertise can operate in qualitatively different ways depending on individuals' motivation and ability to process a message. Under low-elaboration conditions, expertise functions as a peripheral cue that shifts attitudes in line with its valence, while under high-elaboration conditions the same information can bias the direction of message processing or serve as an issue-relevant argument. Misinformation research has rarely tested these elaboration-dependent roles of expertise, leaving a significant gap in understanding when expertise cues matter most.
Sources: Mang et al. (2024)
