Trusted messenger

Trusted messengers are people regarded as credible sources of information. Whether a messenger is trusted is based on many factors. For instance, does the messenger have a vested interest in spreading the information? The extent to which the messenger is trusted will play a significant role in whether people accept the information they provide, regardless of the validity of that information.

Relevant Academic Papers
  • Paglieri, F., Castelfranchi, C., da Costa Pereira, C., Falcone, R., Tettamanzi, A., & Villata, S. (2014). Trusting the messenger because of the message: feedback dynamics from information quality to source evaluation. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 20(2), 176-194.