Webinar in March 2025

Speaker Trustworthiness: Shall Confidence Match Evidence? (March 26, 2025)

Overconfidence is typically damaging to one’s reputation as a trustworthy source of information. Previous research shows that the reputational cost associated with conveying a piece of false information is higher for confident than unconfident speakers. When judging speaker trustworthiness, individuals do not exclusively rely on past accuracy but consider the extent to which speakers expressed a degree of confidence that matched the accuracy of their claims (their “confidence-accuracy calibration”). The present study experimentally examines the interplay between confidence, accuracy and a third factor, namely evidence, in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. Experiment 1 probes the hypothesis that overconfidence does not backfire when a confident but inaccurate claim is justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be wrong is restored if the confidence expressed is based on strong evidence (good confidence-evidence calibration). Experiment 2 investigates the hypothesis that confidence can backfire if a confident and accurate claim is not justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be right is damaged if the confidence expressed is based on weak evidence (bad confidence-evidence calibration). Our results support both hypotheses and thus suggest that “confidence-evidence calibration” plays a crucial role in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness [Read full paper text]. 

Melinda Pozzi is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine. Her academic background spans philosophy, language sciences, information and communication sciences, and cognitive science. Her research examines the interplay between commitment and trust in communication, employing interdisciplinary approaches such as experimental psychology, pragmatics, agent-based modeling, and philosophical theory. She earned a PhD in cognitive science from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where she investigated the cognitive mechanisms that help individuals maintain epistemic vigilance while assessing communicated information. Her current work explores how effectively these mechanisms counter misinformation on a collective scale through modeling and simulations.