Spelling Errors in Brief Computer-Mediated Texts Implicitly Lead to Linearly Additive Penalties in Trustworthiness

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Information Science
• Health Communication

Background:

• Spelling errors in documents can decrease perceived trustworthiness.
• The psychological mechanism for how people weigh these errors in judgments is not fully understood.
• This study investigates implicit trustworthiness judgments influenced by typographic errors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine how spelling errors affect the perceived trustworthiness of online health information.
• To elucidate whether trustworthiness judgments follow an integrative or dichotomous model when encountering spelling errors.
• To quantify the penalty in perceived trustworthiness associated with varying numbers of spelling errors.

Main Methods:

• An online experiment involved 100 participants rating multiple sclerosis health forum posts.
• Text excerpts contained zero, two, or five spelling errors, presented in a counterbalanced design.
• A linear mixed effects model analyzed the impact of error number on trustworthiness ratings.

Main Results:

• Two spelling errors reduced trustworthiness by 5.91 points, and five errors by 13.5 points on a 0-100 scale.
• All conditions (zero, two, five errors) were significantly different from each other (P < 0.001).
• Trustworthiness penalties for errors were nearly linearly additive.

Conclusions:

• Implicit trustworthiness judgments for online health information with spelling errors follow a nearly linear penalty model.
• The findings support an integrative model of psychological judgment, refuting dichotomous heuristics or ceiling effects.
• Even minor spelling errors significantly impact the perceived credibility of health-related content.