The cognitive decision space of trust: An exploratory study of image trustworthiness and the propensity to deceive

In an age where any digital image can be manipulated, studying how and why people trust images as well as how likely people are to endorse deceptive images has become a topic of increasing importance. But, how is it human beings decide whether they trust and image, or not? This article attempts to shed light on the cognitive decision space of trust by means of two experiments. The goal of the first experiment was to induce the dimensions underpinning decisions of trust in relation to images. The goal of the second experiment was to investigate the propensity for subjects to deceive with images in conditions of both high and low levels of deception. The first experiment revealed four dimensions that determined the level of trust in an image: the features of the image, its content, its source, and the participants’ own background knowledge. The second experiment suggests that there is propensity for human subjects to deceive with images