Learning Whom to Trust About the Unseen: Source Credibility and Reliability Transfer in Language Models

Ruijia Guan

A source who has been right before deserves attention, but about what? We ask how far a demonstrated record of reliability travels in language models when the new claim cannot be checked, and whether the answer depends on the kind of claim. Three behavioral studies across six models approach the question from three angles. Study 1 adapts the Einstein-effect paradigm and finds that models, unlike the human sample, favor a spiritual leader over a scientist for the same obscure statement, and that the preference largely reverses when the statement is reworded in the vocabulary of physics. Study 2 adapts a paradigm in which a trusted expert calls a scientific or religious explanation unknown or a mystery; models reproduce the human domain asymmetry in exaggerated form. Study 3, the central test, gives two fictional informants different records on checkable river forecasts and then has them endorse matched claims about hidden natural and spiritual causes of the same village events. Most models carry the record to natural causes and barely at all to spiritual ones; one model transfers it weakly to either. Telling the model that the reliable informant forecasts by spiritual guidance…