Does Quality of Writing Affect Perceived Validity? (2014)

Undergraduates: Chris Cunningham, Sandy Joyner, Kaitlyn Cartwright

Faculty Advisor: Steve Buzinski
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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News companies, textbook authors, magazines, journal articles and bloggers all want the information that they present to be readily accepted and easily accessible. However, sometimes this information is skewed or blatantly false, and the reader accepts it as true. This research seeks to figure out what about how the medium of communication influences consumer's judgement. There are multiple factors that come into play when a reader makes a judgment on the validity of information, such as source credibility and context. For this study, we wanted to examine whether the quality of writing affects the immediate judgment of validity for news articles, both with real and fictitious content. We found that there was a significant effect of quality of writing and perceived validity, as there was a significant effect on content and perceived validity. However, these two factors were found to not interact. There are limitations to this study, ranging from a small sample size to a lack of generalizability across other age groups and media sources.