Source reliability in auditory health persuasion:Its antecedents and consequences

Persuasive health messages can be presented through an auditory channel, thereby enhancing the salience of the source, making it fundamentally different from written or pictorial information. We focused on the determinants of perceived source reliability in auditory health persuasion by investigating it from two distinct angles. First, inferences on the voice (pleasantness) and person (e.g., similarity) significantly predicted perceived source reliability. In a second (experimental) study, three contextual factors (message framing, level of processing, gender matching) affected perceived reliability independently. Furthermore, perceived reliability mediated the effect of message framing on persuasion. The evaluation on source reliability in auditory persuasion seems to be affected by several factors, partly unique to auditory communication. These studies may inspire further research on auditory (health) persuasion