How language affects trust: Coordination, confidence and evidence

Humans use language to transmit information and to manage their relationships. Verbal communication is pervasive but it is open to the risk of manipulation. For this reason, addressees need to be able to calibrate their trust towards the communicator effectively, and communicators need to manage their reputation as reliable sources of information and as interaction partners successfully. Different aspects of the communicative exchange may enhance or decrease trust. In this project, we will focus on five elements and their interplay: linguistic coordination (more specifically the use of similar words), expression of confidence (degree of certainty about the accuracy of the information), strength of evidence (how the information was acquired), accuracy of the evidential claim (whether the statement about the way the information was acquired is accurate), and accuracy of the information.