What makes a first-person source or someone who claims to be an expert credible? When and if the person sharing information is likely to be accurate with their oral and written speech choices at all times to the best of their ability.
People who gaslight or who lie to do things like play mind games with other people are not socially trustworthy. They are not trustworthy in their personal life or at any time professionally.
Credible sources may or may not have a personal or pro-social agenda.
A person who is an absolute jerk most of the time to everyone but who is known for being brutally honest is likely to be perceived by the community as a credible source even if they are not being polite or making any attempt to protect other people’s feelings when they make their conversational choices about what to assert to or about another.
“Whenever you are looking at a source on the internet, you should check several things to verify that the information is credible. These things include the source’s authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, and coverage…” notes the website Finding Credible Sources.
Authority is defined by a person’s knowledge of any given material. An authority source may have studied a body of material or interacted with someone problematic for quite some time, leaving them in a position to assert first-person eyewitness testimony combined with their wholly subject objective experience relating to a person or through an event or to an object.
Establishing oneself as an authority source takes being willing to speak about whatever topic of interest or note in a public venue, typically with your name credited as the source to people who are on a need to know basis.
When claiming that your science experiment solves global warming, it might be prudent to add your name to the paper you publish that is seeking to prove it.
Conversely, you might need only reveal you name and true personal identity as a victim of or witness to a crime to someone like a judge and your legal advocate — allowing your credibility as a witness with expertise on a subject to be added to a list of people willing to consult and to share testimony about a particular person or subject without needing to make an appeal to the community to validate you have insight that’s appropriate to share with them for other people’s best interest (or for your own).
You don’t want to ask a trucker with no medical training to do brain surgery on you or a loved one. People who are credible to consult as expert witnesses or as consultants with credible experiential knowledge to share tend to know the material related to their area of expertise extremely well — not just a little or in any way haphazardly.
People who are happy to share truths about themselves or to collaborate on pro-social communication projects tend to strive for accuracy at all times with their speech. They also tend to be comfortable sharing their name instead of being one of those “Well I heard that everyone is saying…” types of invisible and incredibly suspicious people.
Accuracy matters in life and all forms of communication. It simply does.
People who use words inaccurately on purpose or on accident do incredible harm to listeners who take in the inaccurate statements as if they are real or somehow subjectively meaningful. They truly disrupt the natural course of all forms of social progress and biological social evolution.
Typographical or formatting errors in a publication do not make it inaccurate, nor does failing to include citations to someone with an expensive degree make a document or claim asserted socially invalid.
Typos and formatting issues make print or electronic material difficult for vertical thinkers with low to no emotional intelligence and a groomed case of Cerebral Somatic Narcissism; know people bothered by such things reveal their own social grooming when it comes to academics as well as their own nurtured toxic NLP.
What matters more than looks is that content is accurate when a person chooses to publish or to utter any form of communication. If you pretend that you are happy when you are sad and you gaslight someone into believing you are fine, regardless of your intent to perhaps make them more comfortable or to protect your right to privacy, you have gaslit another human while using speech to give them an inaccurate impression.
Objectivity is the most common trait of someone considered a credible source. It’s the reason victims of crime who show emotional distress when talking about having been victimized are oftentimes easily, but inaccurately, profiled as emotionally unstable, vindictive, and or that their eye-witness testimony is somehow less than expert or socially valuable.
Oddly enough, the more credible and persuasive their witness testimony appears to be, the more likely abusers and people who like watching other people be harmed socially and emotionally are likely to claim that person is “lying”, “over-reacting”, “imagining things”, “attention-seeking”, and abusing the trust and hospitality of the general public.
If the person doing the listening to a victim’s testimony is prone to lying and gaslighting to socially advantage themselves, they will be the first people to call into public question the witness or abuse victim’s social and psychological credibility.
When and if you witness something like this happen to yourself or another, realize that whoever has the agenda to bend the truth for sport or personal profit and amusement is showing you who is and who is not the kind of person to trust.
When that person speaks about any issue in the future related to themselves or another person, resist the urge to passively believe each word they assert.
If they call out other people for being dishonest or for lying about events that happened when and if that person was not physically present or they pretend that because they don’t believe that a victim was traumatized was actually emotionally impacted by caustic social interaction that the person should be socially denied all forms of humane compassion and mental health triage, they are revealing they are not socially trustworthy humans… and therefore that their word should always be taken with a measure of suspicion about whether or not their assessment of the world around them is trustworthy.
If you are not sure if a person’s word is credible, consider the source.
Have they lied and tried to mislead others before into believing gaslighting or outright lies? Have they revealed a lack of emotional intelligence by their commentary about other people in society?
If a person is telling the truth, they simply are. Being truthful with pro-social intent and constant striving for accuracy makes a person credible. Not some degree they purchase or because they tell lies or assert gaslighting and “alternative facts” with verbal facility and limited concept of conscience or signs of social morality.
Credibility is not in the eye of the perceiver. Credible people are truth-tellers who aspire to describe their subjective personal experience of the world around them with accuracy.
People who are not credible gaslight, lie, prevaricate, withhold information at key times, and choose to live their life by a socially competitive rather than a more collaborative ethic.
