Personal Narratives Build Trust in Ideological Conflict

Working with people who hold opposing ideological views can be challenging, as they are often perceived as less capable and less trustworthy than those who share one’s own positions. Across five preregistered experiments (combined n = 3,423), we find that participants view those who share personal stories as more trustworthy than those who share data-driven information or stories about a third party. The perception of trustworthiness is mediated by the extent to which the speaker engages in self-revelation and is greater when the narrative reveals hardship experienced by the author. We further show that people prefer to work on a task relying on trust with someone who shared a personal narrative but prefer the author of a data-driven argument when the task involves cognitive abilities. Finally, we show that greater perceived trustworthiness also emerges in response to naturalistic messages written by untrained authors, as rated by a nationally representative sample.