UC Davis

We used an experimental vignette to examine how two aspects of a decision explanation's packaging - its language and labeling of the decision process - affected perceptions of a decision maker's competency-based trustworthiness. These perceptions were higher when either easy-to-understand language or a legitimating decision process label was present than when both hard-to-understand language and no decision process label were present. These findings suggest that peripheral cues related to decision explanations' packaging may play an important role in improving perceptions of trustworthiness.