The Effect of Coherence on Instruction Following from News Outlets

Research has shown that preferences exist in following information from coherent sources and that incoherent material can diminish overall trust in sources from readers. In line with relational frame theory, coherence, or "sense-making", has emerged as an important factor in the process of rule-following, but some research has been confounded by the degree of extremity used to establish coherence. The present study investigated the role of speaker coherence in rule-following preferences between newspaper outlets. Participants (N = 64) each viewed four news articles that had been published across two anonymized Irish newspaper outlets. Each article was categorized by its level of coherence and level of controversy. Rule-following was measured through the likelihood of participants adopting new habits and following general advice from the news outlet after reading each story. Participants also selected their preferred outlet from which to follow general advice at the end of the study. Results indicated that participants had greater rule-following preferences for coherent outlets, regardless of how controversial the material was perceived to be. Speaker coherence was discussed in terms of its impact on the perceived credibility of media outlets and avenues for reducing polarization.