Using Information Trustworthiness Advice in Decision Making

In a society at the brink of information overload, using a measurement of trustworthiness to focus attention and ultimately reduce risks faced by individuals is an increasingly attractive option in supporting well-conceived decisions. As such, this paper seeks to advance discussions on trustworthiness and decision-making research by critically investigating individuals´ ability to cognitively combine trustworthiness measures and the information content that they relate to, to make decisions. This is an often assumed reality but one that is lacking focused analysis in the socio-technical field. In our experiments, as we present trustworthiness information using visualisations on a computer screen, we also conduct a secondary assessment of a range of visualisation techniques to determine whether there are any better or generally preferred approaches to support decisions. Findings from both evaluations are relatively positive and insightful, and amongst other aspects, reaffirm humans as optimal assessors and identify a particularly strong dependence on trustworthiness levels in influencing to decision-making.