Source credibility
Source credibility refers to the speaker’s positive implications that affect the receiver’s intake of a message. That is why you will find an audience will prefer a particular speaker to another, or a Congregation of worshipers might lose interest when ministered by a different priest. It is one thing to catch the public’s attention and another thing to maintain the same spirit throughout a speech. This is what refers to as source credibility. According to Ohanian and Roobina (1990), the study of source credibility academically started in the 20th century. It was emphasized more during World War II due to the US government’s use of propaganda to influence the public. In this paper, we are interested in whether source credibility affects attitude change or not.
Credibility in the source should be determined by the availability or unavailability of previous attitudes, as argued by Petty et al., (1993). Source credibility had a drastic impact on the change of attitude, according to Mackie and Worth (1989), a statement which Petty and his colleagues emphasized. The credibility of a source affects change in attitudes about the message passed on by that source, and the strength to which these effects may be influenced by the availability or unavailability of prior attitudes.
Additionally, Albarracín et al. (2004) noted that if receivers have built attitudes concerning the piece, the attitudes most likely will result in a readily available, acceptable informed assessment of the object. Likewise, repetitive messages or more comprehensive information concerning an issue should permit people to change their developed attitudes to support prior knowledge or repetitive message (Wood, Rhodes, & Biek, 1995). The decrease in the influence of source credibility is attributed to previous attitudes, the level of information, or repetitive exposure to a piece of particular information or message. This is because prior knowledge or exposure to specific information before is viewed or eyed to be more trustworthy or valid on assessment than in source credibility.
The public or the receivers do not wholly disregard the source’s credibility when they have information on the object or topic or prior attitude on the item. In contrast, a previous perspective on an object does not moderate the influence of credibility in the source because one does not have the motivation to put in mind the information (Kumkale et al.,2010).