Recognizing and Trusting Persuasion Agents: Attitudes Bias Trustworthiness Judgments, but not Persuasion Detection

People rely on intuitive knowledge about persuasion to cope with persuasion attempts motivated by self-interest. Because this knowledge associates persuasive intent with low trustworthiness, identifying the communicator as an agent with ulterior motives tends to reduce trust in the communicator. Three studies suggest that the extent to which people call on this association to assess a persuasion agent depends on whether the agent’s message...