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Investigating the effect of trustworthiness on instruction-based reflexivity
Mathias Van der Biest1, Emiel Cracco1, David Wisniewski1
1Ghent University, Department of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Henri Dunantlaan 2, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.
Acta Psychologica
|May 17, 2020
Summary
Humans rapidly learn behaviors from instructions, but the social aspect, like instructor trustworthiness, was unexplored. This study found trustworthy instructors are followed more, but trustworthiness didn't alter automatic instruction implementation.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Humans uniquely learn behaviors from single instructions, a process primarily studied for cognitive mechanisms.
- The social dimension of instruction following, particularly the role of instructor characteristics like trustworthiness, remains under-investigated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if instructor trustworthiness influences the implementation of instructions.
- To explore the impact of perceived instructor trustworthiness on both explicit and reflexive measures of instruction following.
- To develop and validate a novel paradigm for manipulating and assessing instructor trustworthiness in the context of instruction implementation.
Main Methods:
- Developed and validated a novel paradigm to manipulate perceived trustworthiness of virtual instructors.
- Utilized explicit and reflexive measures to assess instruction implementation in response to virtual characters.
- Conducted three preregistered studies to examine the effects of instructor trustworthiness on cognitive processes.
Main Results:
- A reliable manipulation of perceived instructor trustworthiness was established, inducing implicit associations.
- Participants followed instructions from trustworthy instructors more frequently and faster.
- While instructions led to automatic implementation, this effect was not modulated by the instructor's trustworthiness.
Conclusions:
- A novel method for manipulating instructor trustworthiness and a social variant of the instruction-based reflexivity paradigm were successfully created.
- Instructor trustworthiness influences the frequency and speed of instruction following.
- The cognitive processes underlying automatic instruction implementation are not modulated by instructor trustworthiness.
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