Yonathan A. Arbel, The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences, 52 J. Legal Stud. 417 (2023).

final published Journal of Legal Studies PDF, reviewed locally

Defamation doctrine’s bilateral balance omits audiences even though their belief converts publication into reputational harm

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 417–418, that courts conventionally balance the interests of speakers against the reputations of their targets. That bilateral model neglects a third party—the audience—even though defamatory speech affects reputation only when listeners believe and act on it. This is significant because the legal standard may change the causal process that produces harm, not merely constrain the speaker after the fact. It connects to defamation, reputational harm, audience theory, bilateral balancing, the marketplace of ideas, and third-party effects.

The omitted audience is the conceptual gap that motivates the paper’s experiments and policy analysis.

defamation
reputational harm
audience theory
bilateral balancing
marketplace of ideas
third-party effects

The article tests selected audience responses and does not claim to model every interaction among speakers, targets, publishers, and listeners.

The introduction describes the Supreme Court’s speaker-target balance and identifies audiences as a fundamental but neglected part of the marketplace of ideas.


Effective defamation law can make speech more credible because audiences infer that legal sanctions deter false statements

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 418, that audiences can reason from a speaker’s legal incentives. If false accusations are likely to trigger costly liability, listeners may infer that a published assertion is more likely true; if liability is ineffective, they may discount the assertion and rely on other credibility cues. This is significant because deterrence produces an epistemic spillover—greater trust in the speech that remains. It connects to costly signaling, deterrence, Bayesian audiences, legal incentives, source credibility, and public trust.

The credibility hypothesis supplies the causal mechanism tested in the randomized experiment.

costly signaling
deterrence
Bayesian audiences
legal incentives
source credibility
public trust

The mechanism can operate only to the extent that audiences perceive legal exposure directly or learn its effects through intermediaries and experience.

The introduction summarizes theoretical models in which effective liability reduces expected lying and thereby increases audience credence.


The credibility effect helps when reports are true but can magnify misinformation and stigmatize innocent targets

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 417–418, that law-induced trust has asymmetric consequences. Increased credibility improves reliance on accurate reports, but when a false report survives the liability regime, the same trust can intensify reputational harm; people may also infer guilt when an innocent target does not sue. This is significant because a policy that improves average source credibility can still create serious errors for particular targets. It connects to misinformation, false positives, stigma, residual falsehoods, public trust, and unintended consequences.

The dual effect prevents greater trust from being treated as an unqualified social benefit.

misinformation
false positives
stigma
residual falsehoods
public trust
unintended consequences

The net welfare effect depends on the prevalence of true and false reports, the strength of deterrence, and the behavioral stakes in a particular domain.

The abstract and introduction contrast the desirable effect on truthful reports with perverse effects on misinformation and nonsuing targets.


Credibility effects make stricter law and deregulation potential trust-management tools pointing in opposite directions

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 418–419, that policymakers worried about declining trust in mainstream media might use stronger defamation accountability to raise credibility. Conversely, those seeking to reduce the perceived authority of tabloids or social media might find that weaker legal screening encourages skepticism. This is significant because the desirable legal direction depends partly on the preexisting and desired level of trust in the relevant source domain. It connects to media trust, legal design, source differentiation, deregulation, misinformation policy, and domain-specific regulation.

The argument turns audience trust into an explicit policy variable rather than an accidental byproduct of doctrine.

media trust
legal design
source differentiation
deregulation
misinformation policy
domain-specific regulation

Manipulating trust through liability also affects speech supply, victim remedies, and error costs, so credibility cannot be the sole policy objective.

The introduction describes stronger law as a possible trust-enhancing tool and weaker law as a possible means of discounting problematic sources.


The credibility effect faces informational, legal-consciousness, and cognitive objections that require empirical testing

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 419, that laypeople may not know complex defamation rules, may not think about law while consuming news, and may lack the cognitive capacity to infer truth from a speaker’s incentives. The fundamental attribution problem and documented failures of Bayesian reasoning make the last objection especially serious. This is significant because a theoretically rational signaling effect may have little real-world force if ordinary audiences cannot or do not perform the inference. It connects to legal consciousness, bounded rationality, legal knowledge, fundamental attribution error, Bayesian reasoning, and empirical validation.

The three objections define the empirical questions and prevent theoretical elegance from substituting for behavioral evidence.

legal consciousness
bounded rationality
legal knowledge
fundamental attribution error
Bayesian reasoning
empirical validation

The categories overlap, and an observed effect in a prompted experiment does not by itself resolve how each obstacle operates in everyday life.

The introduction identifies three challenges and relates the cognitive objection to base-rate neglect and dispositional attribution.


Legally sophisticated intermediaries can transmit a credibility effect to audiences who do not understand defamation law themselves

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 419, that people often consume information through journalists, pundits, and public intellectuals who are more legally sophisticated than the general public. Those intermediaries can alter their publication standards in response to liability, and audiences can learn from the resulting track record without mastering doctrine. This is significant because public ignorance does not eliminate audience effects; it may change the channel from direct legal inference to institutional learning. It connects to information intermediaries, editorial standards, indirect effects, organizational learning, media reputation, and legal expertise.

The indirect channel weakens the claim that credibility effects require every listener to consciously reason about legal rules.

information intermediaries
editorial standards
indirect effects
organizational learning
media reputation
legal expertise

The strength of transmission depends on intermediary responsiveness, audience observation, and the erosion or persistence of trusted gatekeepers.

The introduction explains how sophisticated intermediaries can filter legal incentives to the public through their reporting behavior and reputations.


A randomized vignette experiment tests whether assigned defamation-law effectiveness causally changes trust across four media

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 419–420, that the primary study randomly assigned 200 participants to an effective or ineffective defamation regime and asked them to assess factual allegations appearing in television news, a newspaper, a blog, and social media. By varying the legal regime while holding the reports constant, the design tests whether law itself changes perceived credibility in a controlled setting. This is significant because it moves the credibility effect from theoretical prediction to causal behavioral evidence. It connects to randomized controlled trials, vignette experiments, media formats, causal identification, treatment assignment, and legal psychology.

The design is the paper’s principal causal test of the audience mechanism.

randomized controlled trials
vignette experiments
media formats
causal identification
treatment assignment
legal psychology

Participants were informed about and thereby primed to consider the legal regime, so the design establishes existence more cleanly than everyday magnitude.

The introduction previews a 200-person randomized treatment across four realistic media scenarios and reports a clear credibility response.


Effective defamation law creates a strong stigma from failure to sue, complicating the conventional vindication rationale

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 420, that participants were asked whether a target’s failure to sue implied guilt. Subjects assigned to effective law were more than three times as likely to attach that stigma, a difference of roughly thirty-six percentage points. This is significant because a legal venue intended to vindicate the innocent can impose reputational pressure on equally innocent people who decline or cannot afford to litigate. It connects to vindication, nonsuit inference, stigma, access to justice, litigation signaling, and reputational pressure.

The result previews a direct empirical challenge to an important justification for defamation remedies.

vindication
nonsuit inference
stigma
access to justice
litigation signaling
reputational pressure

The measure comes from a vignette and captures perceived guilt from nonsuit, not actual litigation decisions or long-term reputation outcomes.

The introduction reports a thirty-six-point treatment difference in the stigma attached to a target who did not file suit.


Section 1, Ordinary-Judgment Study Preview

U.S. and U.K. participants converged in perceived actionability and showed a positive association between actionability and credibility

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 420–421, that a second 200-person study asked U.S. and U.K. participants first to rate four reports’ credibility without mentioning law and then to estimate legal exposure if the reports were false. Despite materially different libel regimes, the groups gave surprisingly similar actionability ratings, while individuals who perceived greater actionability also tended to perceive greater credibility. This is significant because ordinary legal perceptions may be both behaviorally relevant and systematically inaccurate. It connects to comparative law, legal misperception, actionability, credibility judgments, legal consciousness, and correlational evidence.

The preview links real-world legal beliefs to trust while flagging that those beliefs need not track actual doctrine.

comparative law
legal misperception
actionability
credibility judgments
legal consciousness
correlational evidence

The association is correlational, and cross-country convergence can have explanations other than doctrinal ignorance.

The introduction reports the second study’s sequence, U.S.–U.K. convergence, and positive credibility-actionability association with appropriate causal caution.


Defamation doctrine exposes false, public, reputation-damaging statements to damages while preserving breathing space for public debate

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 421–422, that defamation law targets public falsehoods harmful to a person’s standing, but strict enforcement can chill speakers and investigative journalism. Supreme Court doctrine therefore presents adjudication as an accommodation between reputation and the free circulation of information. This is significant because the inherited balance counts speaker and target interests while assuming away the audience response later tested in the paper. It connects to tort liability, breathing space, chilling effects, investigative journalism, Curtis Publishing v. Butts, and reputation.

The doctrinal background isolates the conventional two-factor framework the empirical evidence is meant to revise.

tort liability
breathing space
chilling effects
investigative journalism
Curtis Publishing v. Butts
reputation

The summary compresses a complex body of constitutional and common-law doctrine and does not imply uniform standards across jurisdictions or plaintiff types.

Section 2 states the core elements, reputation-protection goal, chilling concern, and Supreme Court formulation of bilateral accommodation.


Omitting audiences from the marketplace-of-ideas framework creates a deep gap because reputational injury depends on belief

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 422, that the neglect of audiences is both significant and conceptually curious. A derogatory statement cannot lower reputation unless listeners credit it, and the marketplace of ideas is populated primarily by those listeners rather than only by speakers and targets. This is significant because a doctrine built around information exchange lacks a theory of how its largest constituency evaluates information. It connects to the marketplace of ideas, audience cognition, reputation, First Amendment theory, information markets, and legal blind spots.

The argument explains why audience effects belong inside, rather than adjacent to, constitutional and tort analysis.

marketplace of ideas
audience cognition
reputation
First Amendment theory
information markets
legal blind spots

Belief is necessary for the reputational mechanism studied, but some false statements can cause other harms through repetition, distraction, or institutional response.

Section 2 emphasizes that defamatory speech is harmful only if believed and that audiences constitute most of the marketplace metaphor.


Adjacent empirical literatures provide conflicting predictions about whether people adjust credibility to incentives, source quality, and legal regulation

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 422–423, that prior studies do not make the credibility hypothesis obvious. Some audiences fail to discount self-serving advisers, some low-credibility sources persuade as well as high-credibility sources, and consumers may trust differently regulated health claims similarly; other work shows source and framing effects. This is significant because the defamation-specific audience response cannot be safely inferred from general signaling theory or adjacent domains. It connects to source-credibility research, conflict-of-interest disclosure, FDA labeling, third-person effects, communication theory, and external validity.

The conflicting record justifies a direct experimental test rather than treating the theory as behaviorally settled.

source-credibility research
conflict-of-interest disclosure
FDA labeling
third-person effects
communication theory
external validity

Adjacent settings differ from defamation in salience, stakes, information, and institutional cues, so their inconsistency is suggestive rather than dispositive.

Section 2 surveys studies of advisers, source credibility, health claims, defamatory communication, and third-person effects before posing the empirical question.


The primary experiment used 200 quality-screened online participants whose sample was more educated and whiter than the U.S. population

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 423–424, that Positly recruited unique, attentive MTurk participants and supplied quality controls suitable for a first causal test. The sample’s median age and income were fairly close to U.S. benchmarks, but it was 77.5 percent white and 71 percent college educated, making it substantially more educated than the population. This is significant because education could increase the ability to reason abstractly about legal incentives and therefore inflate the measured effect. It connects to online samples, MTurk, Positly, sample representativeness, education bias, and experimental validity.

The demographic description supplies a concrete boundary on population generalization while explaining the platform choice.

online samples
MTurk
Positly
sample representativeness
education bias
experimental validity

Post hoc analysis found no economically or statistically significant demographic correlations in the primary study, but the nonrepresentative sample still warrants caution.

Section 3.1 reports recruitment safeguards, sample demographics, the education skew, and the potential direction of resulting bias.


The primary design deliberately trades natural salience for internal validity and should estimate existence more confidently than magnitude

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 424, that making the governing regime clear necessarily informs and primes participants to think about defamation law. The study also omits an untreated group because such a group would differ in more than legal strictness, complicating a clean comparison. This is significant because the experiment is designed to answer whether people can and will use law as a credibility cue under clear conditions, not how large an incremental real-world reform would be. It connects to priming, internal validity, treatment contrast, control groups, estimands, and experimental design.

The methodological statement prevents the large treatment contrast from being misread as a precise policy-effect estimate.

priming
internal validity
treatment contrast
control groups
estimands
experimental design

The absence of an untreated baseline and the salience of the manipulation limit translation from the laboratory contrast to ordinary media consumption.

Section 3.1 expressly characterizes the study as a test of existence and explains the priming and untreated-control tradeoffs.


The treatment contrasts a regime where only false accusers likely face substantial damages with one where false accusers rarely face effective suit

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 424–425, that participants received a short description of an imaginary state’s law. In the effective condition, false accusers—and only false accusers—were likely to be sued and pay substantial damages; in the ineffective condition, suit and meaningful damages were unlikely. This is significant because the manipulation isolates a strong difference in the expected cost of false speech, allowing the bilateral no-audience hypothesis to be tested against the credibility hypothesis. It connects to experimental manipulation, expected sanctions, false speech, treatment fidelity, null hypotheses, and causal mechanisms.

The treatment operationalizes legal effectiveness as the audience-relevant incentive whose credibility effect is at issue.

experimental manipulation
expected sanctions
false speech
treatment fidelity
null hypotheses
causal mechanisms

Real legal regimes differ along many dimensions and rarely assure that only false speakers are sanctioned.

Section 3.1 reproduces the effective and ineffective regime descriptions and contrasts the bilateral prediction with the credibility hypothesis.


The experiment uses serious, ambiguous allegations across newspaper, social media, television, and blog formats to test robustness across media

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 425–428, that each participant saw four realistic but fictitious scenarios on separate pages: a newspaper embezzlement allegation, a Facebook employer-employee dispute, a local television accusation, and a blog’s implied-blackmail story. Each involved a potentially actionable factual claim and used a 0–100 credibility measure. This is significant because a common legal treatment can be observed against source formats with very different barriers to entry and public reputations. It connects to multi-scenario design, newspapers, social media, television news, blogs, and measurement robustness.

Media variation tests whether the effect is confined to institutional journalism or generalizes to less formal channels.

multi-scenario design
newspapers
social media
television news
blogs
measurement robustness

The scenarios cannot represent the full heterogeneity within each medium and necessarily provide less context than real information environments.

Section 3.1 describes the four allegations, their visual formats, and the repeated probability-of-truth outcome measure.


The newspaper scenario measures whether liability changes belief in an unsupported embezzlement allegation by an institutional source

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 425–426, that newspapers warrant separate attention because they remain important information sources and dominate Supreme Court defamation cases. Participants saw a designed local article attributing a company’s financial problems partly to accountant Miranda Dewey’s embezzlement, without supporting evidence, then rated truth and likely success in suit. This is significant because institutional journalism combines baseline credibility with salient exposure to professional and legal discipline. It connects to newspapers, embezzlement allegations, institutional media, defamation litigation, credibility measurement, and journalistic verification.

The scenario tests the effect in the medium most historically associated with constitutional defamation doctrine.

newspapers
embezzlement allegations
institutional media
defamation litigation
credibility measurement
journalistic verification

A single fictitious local article cannot capture variation in outlet partisanship, reputation, sourcing, or audience familiarity.

The paper explains the doctrinal centrality of newspapers and presents the Dewey article, probability rating, explanation, and lawsuit question.


The social-media scenario focuses on an employer’s accusation because a potentially judgment-proof individual speaker would weaken the treatment’s relevance

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 425–427, that low entry barriers and unfamiliar speakers make social media a distinct credibility environment. The Facebook scenario included competing allegations between an ex-employee and employer, but the analysis centered on the employer’s theft accusation because participants might regard the employee as judgment proof. This is significant because expected enforceability, not nominal doctrine alone, determines whether legal exposure can function as a credibility cue. It connects to social media, judgment-proof speakers, employer speech, practical enforceability, platform communication, and source identity.

The design choice reflects the article’s legal-realist focus on sanctions that audiences believe can actually be imposed.

social media
judgment-proof speakers
employer speech
practical enforceability
platform communication
source identity

Participants may infer personal familiarity from a social-media feed or rely on stereotypes unrelated to the legal treatment.

The paper describes the Facebook exchange, explains why the employer’s statement is the focal report, and notes the possible judgment-proof problem.


Sections 3.1.3-3.1.4, Television and Blog

Neutralized television and blog scenarios test credibility effects without importing a famous outlet’s partisan reputation

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 427–428, that television’s dynamic visual presentation differs from print and that blogs span institutional and informal communication. The study therefore used a neutral fictional local station and a local-politics blog rather than polarizing brands, with allegations involving an ulteriorly motivated businessman and an implied blackmail scheme. This is significant because neutral source names reduce the risk that preexisting partisan trust overwhelms the legal treatment. It connects to television news, blogs, partisan cues, source neutrality, visual media, and experimental control.

The scenarios extend the treatment while deliberately avoiding well-known outlet identities that could confound trust.

television news
blogs
partisan cues
source neutrality
visual media
experimental control

Neutrality improves control but reduces realism because real audiences often encounter outlets with established political and reputational identities.

The paper explains the medium-specific rationale and design choices for the fictional television and blog reports.


Effective defamation law significantly increased perceived credibility in every tested medium by fourteen to twenty-six percent

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 428–429, that mean credibility was higher under effective law for the newspaper, social-media, television, and blog scenarios. The relative increases ranged from about fourteen to twenty-six percent, and each between-group difference was statistically and practically significant. This is significant because the treatment effect appears across institutional and informal media rather than depending on one source format. It connects to treatment effects, cross-media robustness, statistical significance, practical significance, public trust, and experimental replication.

The four-way consistency is the strongest evidence that the credibility effect is not an artifact of a single vignette.

treatment effects
cross-media robustness
statistical significance
practical significance
public trust
experimental replication

All scenarios used the same highly salient legal manipulation, so cross-media consistency does not establish real-world effect size.

Figure 5 and the accompanying text report higher means and significant tests for all four media conditions.


Across conditions, effective law raised mean credibility from 54.6 to 65, a 10.4-point or nineteen-percent increase

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 428, that pooled mean credibility was 54.6 in the ineffective-law condition and 65 in the effective-law condition. On a scale where 50 means equally likely true or false and 75 means probably true, the 10.4-point difference is substantively meaningful as well as highly statistically significant. This is significant because the manipulation can move an allegation across decision-relevant regions of belief rather than merely produce a tiny numerical shift. It connects to effect size, pooled analysis, probability judgments, practical significance, legal treatments, and quantitative evidence.

The pooled estimate summarizes the magnitude of the controlled credibility effect in an interpretable scale.

effect size
pooled analysis
probability judgments
practical significance
legal treatments
quantitative evidence

The nineteen-percent figure arises from a stark contrast between hypothetical regimes and should not be projected onto incremental reforms.

The findings section reports the two pooled means, the 10.4-point difference, its relative percentage, scale interpretation, and statistical test.


The credibility treatment remains large and significant after controlling for education, its treatment interaction, and other demographics

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 428–429, that regression controls for age, race, gender, income, education, and the education-by-treatment interaction do not eliminate the effect. None of those covariates was statistically significant in the reported primary analysis, while the legal-regime coefficient remained large and highly significant. This is significant because the sample’s education skew does not mechanically explain the experimental contrast within the study. It connects to covariate adjustment, regression robustness, demographic controls, heterogeneous treatment effects, education, and internal validity.

The controlled analysis addresses a salient imbalance between the online sample and the U.S. population.

covariate adjustment
regression robustness
demographic controls
heterogeneous treatment effects
education
internal validity

Nonsignificant covariates in a 200-person experiment do not prove demographic invariance or population representativeness.

The text accompanying Figure 5 describes the Online Appendix regressions and persistence of the treatment effect with demographic controls.


Effective-law respondents used liability as a central credibility cue, whereas ineffective-law respondents substituted journalistic and contextual cues

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 429–430, that free-text explanations reveal different mental models across treatments. Participants under effective law often reasoned that a publisher would investigate before risking damages; those under ineffective law more often evaluated resources, journalistic norms, source type, personal familiarity, or the plausibility of the accusation. This is significant because the qualitative evidence identifies the inferential pathway behind the numerical treatment effect. It connects to mediation, free-text analysis, legal cues, journalistic norms, source heuristics, and mental models.

The explanations support the theory that legal exposure changes source credibility rather than merely shifting scale responses mechanically.

mediation
free-text analysis
legal cues
journalistic norms
source heuristics
mental models

The qualitative analysis is descriptive, and participants’ explanations may rationalize judgments rather than reveal the actual cognitive cause.

Section 3.3 compares quoted explanations from the two regimes and catalogs the alternative cues invoked under weak law.


Lay audiences reason as legal realists by considering awareness, litigation probability, resources, and collectability rather than nominal rules alone

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 430–431, that respondents spontaneously considered whether a company knew the law, whether an accuser or target could afford counsel, whether a suit would actually be filed, and whether victory would produce anything collectible. Their credibility judgments therefore incorporated practical enforcement and party characteristics, not simply the verbal legal standard. This is significant because audience effects may track perceived law in action more closely than formal doctrine on the books. It connects to legal realism, litigation costs, judgment-proof parties, legal awareness, enforcement probability, and audience sophistication.

The responses rebut the assumption that laypeople can use only crude or purely nominal legal cues.

legal realism
litigation costs
judgment-proof parties
legal awareness
enforcement probability
audience sophistication

The vignettes prompted a legal context, and isolated comments do not establish how frequently real audiences perform each calculation.

The qualitative section quotes respondents discussing legal knowledge, ability to finance suit, likelihood of filing, and practical gain from litigation.


A credibility shift can be behaviorally minimal for a distrusted claim or pivotal when an audience is near a decision threshold

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 431–432, that the same numerical increase in trust can have different practical consequences. If a statement remains deeply implausible, conduct may not change; if the listener is near a threshold, a modest increase can determine belief, sharing, hiring, voting, or other action. This is significant because effect size must be interpreted jointly with baseline credibility and downstream decisions. It connects to threshold effects, baseline trust, practical significance, nonlinear behavior, decision theory, and heterogeneous consequences.

The observation prevents an average scale shift from being equated mechanically with a uniform real-world impact.

threshold effects
baseline trust
practical significance
nonlinear behavior
decision theory
heterogeneous consequences

The primary study measured credibility ratings rather than actual downstream choices, so threshold consequences are an interpretive implication.

The summary distinguishes cases in which the observed credibility change would be minimal from those in which it would be pivotal.


Weak legal screening shifts audiences toward nonlegal credibility cues, potentially including source demographics

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 431, that ineffective-law respondents relied less on law and more on medium, familiarity, reputation, plausibility, and other contextual signals. A few comments hinted that sex or assumptions about a “bitter ex-employee” might enter those judgments. This is significant because reducing reliance on law does not create neutral skepticism; it reallocates epistemic weight to alternative heuristics that may be informative or biased. It connects to cue substitution, stereotypes, source demographics, heuristics, weak enforcement, and epistemic inequality.

The possibility of substitution broadens the welfare analysis beyond the direct mean effect on credibility.

cue substitution
stereotypes
source demographics
heuristics
weak enforcement
epistemic inequality

Evidence that demographic cues mattered was explicitly preliminary, with no participant making a direct race- or sex-based inference.

The summary describes greater use of alternative cues under ineffective law and cautiously notes a few comments suggestive of demographic inference.


The standard vindication rationale treats a favorable judgment as an independent means of restoring reputation

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 432, that courts and tort theorists justify defamation law partly because it gives a maliciously attacked person a public venue to establish falsity and recover a good name. The theory expects observers to update favorably when a redeeming judgment appears. This is significant because that same premise—that audiences draw information from litigation—also requires analysis of what they infer when no case is filed or a case is lost. It connects to vindication, corrective justice, public adjudication, reputational repair, judicial signals, and tort theory.

The conventional rationale contains the audience-updating mechanism that generates the paper’s reverse-vindication critique.

vindication
corrective justice
public adjudication
reputational repair
judicial signals
tort theory

A favorable judgment may genuinely repair reputation for some plaintiffs; the argument challenges vindication as an independent, unqualified justification.

Section 4 quotes judicial and scholarly formulations of vindication and reconstructs their theory of public updating.


Section 4, Reverse Vindication Experiment

Failure to sue produced a 36.4-point guilt stigma under effective law, with means of 52.6 versus 16.2 under ineffective law

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 432–433, that 186 attentive participants who evaluated the blog accusation also rated whether the target’s failure to sue meant she was guilty. Mean perceived guilt from nonsuit was 52.6 in the effective-law condition and 16.2 in the ineffective-law condition, a highly significant 36.4-point difference. This is significant because strong law can make litigation abstention itself defamatory evidence in the public mind. It connects to reverse vindication, stigma, treatment effects, nonsuit inference, access barriers, and litigation pressure.

The experiment quantifies the reputational cost imposed on targets who do not use the legal remedy.

reverse vindication
stigma
treatment effects
nonsuit inference
access barriers
litigation pressure

Participants assessed a single hypothetical failure to sue; real observers may have more information about cost, strategy, timing, or settlement.

Section 4 describes the reverse-vindication question and Figure 6 reports mean guilt ratings of 52.6 and 16.2 with a significant t-test.


Section 5, Direct and Indirect Everyday Channels

Outside the laboratory, credibility effects can arise directly from perceived law or indirectly from regulated institutions’ track records

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 433–434, that everyday audiences lack experimental information and priming, which weakens a direct pathway. Yet people can learn indirectly that FDA-labeled drugs or legally exposed media have reliable track records, and sophisticated intermediaries can adjust standards before audiences observe the outputs. This is significant because external validity depends on multiple channels with different knowledge requirements rather than a single conscious legal calculation. It connects to institutional learning, direct effects, indirect effects, FDA labels, media intermediaries, and ecological validity.

The channel distinction provides a framework for interpreting the gap between controlled treatment and ordinary judgment.

institutional learning
direct effects
indirect effects
FDA labels
media intermediaries
ecological validity

The paper does not causally estimate either channel in natural media environments.

Section 5 contrasts weak everyday salience with learning from institutional labels, intermediary behavior, and perceived legal standards.


The second study measures credibility before mentioning law and then elicits perceived actionability from 101 U.S. and 99 U.K. participants

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 434–435, that Prolific recruited 101 U.S. and 99 U.K. participants, who first rated four ambiguous reports without any reference to defamation law. Only after responses were locked did participants learn each allegation was false and estimate the plaintiff’s chance of prevailing with reasonable evidence. This is significant because ordering prevents the legal question from directly priming the credibility judgment and permits both cross-jurisdictional and within-person analysis. It connects to survey sequencing, legal consciousness, comparative samples, actionability, within-subject correlation, and priming control.

The design provides preliminary evidence about spontaneous legal associations while preserving the temporal order needed for that inference.

survey sequencing
legal consciousness
comparative samples
actionability
within-subject correlation
priming control

The samples again skewed educated and differed from national populations in gender, age, race, wealth, or education.

Section 5.1 reports recruitment, sample composition, four scenarios, absence of legal cues during credibility ratings, and the subsequent actionability question.


Section 5.2, Cross-Jurisdiction Findings

U.K. and U.S. participants gave nearly identical mean actionability ratings despite materially different libel regimes

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 435–436, that 800 response pairs yielded mean actionability ratings of 75.04 in the United Kingdom and 76.03 in the United States, a statistically insignificant difference. This convergence was unexpected given the stricter English legal standard and was not mirrored by identical credibility distributions. This is significant because lay legal beliefs may compress real doctrinal differences and therefore distort the behavioral consequences predicted from formal law. It connects to comparative defamation, legal misperception, U.S.–U.K. differences, actionability, acquiescence bias, and law in action.

The near-identical ratings are the principal evidence that public perceptions do not map straightforwardly onto comparative doctrine.

comparative defamation
legal misperception
U.S.–U.K. differences
actionability
acquiescence bias
law in action

The result could reflect survey response style, shared moral expectations, or perceived practical enforcement rather than ignorance alone.

Section 5.2 reports the two actionability means, their nonsignificant difference, and an acquiescence-bias alternative considered against the credibility distributions.


Section 5.2, Credibility-Actionability Association

Perceived actionability and credibility were positively correlated overall and in three of four scenarios, with a public-figure newspaper exception

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 436–437, that perceived credibility correlated with perceived legal exposure at r = .21 across all 800 pairs and remained statistically significant with demographic controls. Scenario correlations ranged from .18 to .27 except for a newspaper report about a public figure, where the relationship was near zero, possibly reflecting perceived U.S. media immunity on public concerns. This is significant because participants tended to believe speakers more when they thought lying would be legally costly, even without a legal prompt. It connects to correlation, costly signaling, public figures, actual malice, source credibility, and spontaneous inference.

The association supplies real-world-facing evidence that laypeople link perceived law and truth judgments on their own.

correlation
costly signaling
public figures
actual malice
source credibility
spontaneous inference

Correlation does not establish that actionability beliefs caused credibility judgments, and one scenario did not show the association.

Figures 7–8 and the text report pooled and scenario-specific correlations, significance, controls, and the public-figure exception.


Section 5.3, Misperception and Practical Law

Convergent actionability beliefs may reflect doctrinal misperception, common moral norms, or practical offsets between formal stringency and enforcement conditions

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 437–438, that Americans may exaggerate liability, Britons may underestimate it, or both groups may answer from shared morality rather than doctrine. Alternatively, lay legal realism may perceive that stricter English rules are offset by lower damages, lower litigiousness, or loser-pays costs, narrowing the practical difference. This is significant because policy behavior responds to perceived effective law, whose sources may be doctrinal, institutional, or moral. It connects to compensating differentials, English rule, damages, litigation culture, moral norms, and perceived enforcement.

The competing explanations prevent cross-country convergence from being reduced to simple ignorance.

compensating differentials
English rule
damages
litigation culture
moral norms
perceived enforcement

The study does not identify which explanation dominates or measure participants’ knowledge of particular rules.

Section 5.3 offers misperception, social-norm, and practical-enforcement explanations for the cross-jurisdictional result.


Section 5.3, Behavioral Implications and Caution

Misperceptions can amplify, mute, or redirect credibility, chilling, recourse, and vindication effects even when formal law does not change

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 437–438, that exaggerated legal effectiveness can create excess trust, while moral or sticky beliefs about law can make doctrinal reform behaviorally weak. The same perceived regime affects willingness to speak, expectations of suit, and reputational inferences from litigation, especially as social media makes laypeople speakers, victims, and listeners at once. This is significant because predicting legal impact requires mapping public legal consciousness rather than reading statutes and cases alone. It connects to behavioral law, legal salience, chilling effects, recourse, social media, and perceived law.

The proposition generalizes legal misperception from credibility to the conventional behavioral channels of defamation doctrine.

behavioral law
legal salience
chilling effects
recourse
social media
perceived law

These downstream implications are theoretically derived from the perception findings and were not separately randomized in the second study.

The discussion explains how misperception changes multiple behavioral effects and why weakened intermediaries make lay beliefs increasingly consequential.


Sections 6.1-6.2, External Validity and Limitations

The experiments show capacity and motivation to use legal cues but do not establish the size of the credibility effect in everyday life

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 438–440, that the laboratory evidence is large and robust enough to establish clear potential for credibility and nonsuit-stigma effects. Everyday magnitude remains uncertain because people are less informed and primed, legal beliefs are heterogeneous, samples skew educated, vignettes constrain information, contextual details may confound responses, and the primary contrast lacks an untreated control. This is significant because the paper separates proof of behavioral possibility from population and policy calibration. It connects to external validity, sample bias, vignette limitations, priming, treatment magnitude, and ecological inference.

The limitations section precisely defines what the experiments support and what must be learned from field or natural-experiment evidence.

external validity
sample bias
vignette limitations
priming
treatment magnitude
ecological inference

Real settings may provide richer search opportunities that attenuate the effect, while indirect intermediary channels or legal misperceptions may amplify it.

Sections 6.1 and 6.2 inventory sample, scenario, information, control-group, and everyday-salience limits while retaining the existence claim.


Section 6.3, Trust and Communication Policy

Defamation law can be a trust-enhancing lever, but public communication may sometimes outperform doctrinal reform

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 440–441, that declining trust in the press threatens democratic self-governance and that stronger accountability may enhance source credibility. When direct effects are limited by public ignorance, however, informing people about the actual legal standard can change trust and salience without altering liability. This is significant because an awareness campaign may target misperception while avoiding the First Amendment and error costs of substantive restriction. It connects to media trust, democratic governance, public education, legal salience, First Amendment constraints, and communication policy.

The communication alternative follows directly from the finding that perceived rather than formal law drives the audience channel.

media trust
democratic governance
public education
legal salience
First Amendment constraints
communication policy

Awareness campaigns can also prime overreliance, and the article does not experimentally compare communications with doctrinal changes.

The policy section identifies stricter accountability and public legal-information campaigns as distinct trust levers with different constraints.


Section 6.3, Limits and Three-Factor Balance

Courts should balance speaker, target, and audience effects using domain-specific baseline trust and legal salience

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on page 441, that overly strict or apparently strict law can make surviving falsehoods more harmful and stigmatize targets who do not sue, even if it reduces false-speech volume. Courts therefore balance three factors, not two, and should ask how much trust already exists, how much is desirable, and how salient direct or indirect legal cues are in the domain. This is significant because the credibility effect can justify different legal directions for social media and printed news. It connects to trilateral balancing, the seesaw dynamic, domain specificity, baseline trust, stigma, and free-speech moderation.

The proposal is the article’s principal doctrinal revision to conventional defamation balancing.

trilateral balancing
seesaw dynamic
domain specificity
baseline trust
stigma
free-speech moderation

The article does not supply a numerical welfare rule, and limited public awareness may shrink both credibility and other lay behavioral effects.

Section 6.3 explains the tradeoff between fewer falsehoods and amplified harm and instructs courts to consider trust, salience, and media context.


Section 6.3, Broader Applications and Research Agenda

Credibility effects may behave unexpectedly under identity-driven belief and extend to many legal regimes that police falsity

Professor Yonathan A. Arbel claims, in “The Credibility Effect: Defamation Law and Audiences” on pages 441–442, that audiences do not always seek truth: followers may reinterpret sanctions or negative coverage as persecution and strengthen allegiance to a charlatan. The broader mechanism also matters wherever law certifies or punishes veracity, including securities, advertising, false light, stolen valor, fraud, trademark, and perjury. This is significant because anti-misinformation law can create source-credibility effects beyond defamation and in directions simple rational models miss. It connects to motivated reasoning, persecution narratives, securities disclosure, false advertising, fraud, and natural experiments.

The final proposition generalizes the research program while identifying non-epistemic belief as a major boundary condition.

motivated reasoning
persecution narratives
securities disclosure
false advertising
fraud
natural experiments

These cross-doctrinal applications are hypotheses for future work; the reported experiments directly test only defamation-related vignettes and perceptions.

The conclusion discusses charlatan dynamics, enumerates other falsity-regulating fields, and calls for natural experiments and better measurement of public legal beliefs.