Psychologists have identified the qualities that influence trust.

Every day, people encounter a vast amount of information and independently choose which viewpoint to adopt. Authors of a recent study discovered how individuals determine the credibility of others' words, while another research showed that trust can be influenced by accent.

Experts from the University of Pittsburgh and Vanderbilt University (USA), along with the University of Vienna (Austria), investigated what drives people to trust scientists. Their research was published in the scientific journal Nature Human Behavior.

The authors conducted five experiments involving a total of 2034 participants. In the first study, participants characterized scientists in terms of so-called "intellectual humility" — the ability to acknowledge that someone else's knowledge (including their own) may be incomplete or incorrect. Responses to subsequent questions indicated that respondents were more likely to agree with the opinions of those scientists whom they had previously identified as more "intellectually humble."

Participants in the second experiment were asked to read one of three articles about a fictional researcher studying ways to combat prolonged COVID-19 symptoms. The texts presented the same stance on COVID treatment, but varied in how the researcher was described. Her characterization either contained no information about "intellectual humility" or indicated a low or high level of it. Respondents who were introduced to the expert as a "non-intellectually humble" woman showed significantly less trust in her words and were more likely to question the validity of her research compared to those who were presented with a neutral or positive depiction regarding "intellectual humility."

The third and fourth studies revealed that the identified pattern was independent of gender and racial background. In the fifth experiment, researchers sought to determine which behavioral traits are perceived as indicators of high or low levels of "intellectual humility." They asked respondents to read any of four interviews with a fictional scientist, each employing one method that could potentially enhance the sense of "intellectual humility," such as the speaker discussing the limitations of their research or acknowledging the contributions of their graduate students.

The chosen approaches enhanced the "intellectual humility" of the scientist in the eyes of the study participants but did not increase their trust in her statements. In some cases, respondents, on the contrary, became less inclined to believe the fictional character in the material.

The authors of the article plan to continue their research to identify specific strategies that allow for the demonstration of "intellectual humility" in public speaking while simultaneously building trust with the audience. However, they were pleasantly surprised by the results of the experiments.

"We were inspired by the public's understanding that science does not provide answers to all questions. It is important to ask the right questions and acknowledge that we do not understand everything, learning as we move forward. Although we still need to find out how scientists can express their 'intellectual humility,' we now know that people feel: a lack of 'intellectual humility' undermines the aspects of science that make it valuable and rigorous," the researchers concluded.