Says Who? Credibility Effects in Self-Verification Strivings

Research shows that people prefer self-consistent over self-discrepant feedback—the self-verification effect (Swann, 1983, 2012). It is not clear, however, whether the effect stems from striving for self-verification or from the preference for subjectively accurate information. We argue that people self-verify because they find self-verifying feedback more accurate than self-discrepant feedback. We thus experimentally manipulated feedback credibility by providing information on its source: a student in the control condition and an experienced psychologist in the experimental condition. In line with our expectations, the results of two preregistered studies with 342 preselected participants showed that people self-verified only in the control condition. In the experimental condition, the effect disappeared (or reversed in Study 1). Study 2 showed that individual differences in credibility (epistemic authority) ascribed to self and psychologists matter as well. These findings suggest that feedback credibility, rather than the desire for self-verification, often drives the self-verification effect.