Goodwill: A reexamination of the construct and its measurement
Abstract
As a result of the controversy over the dimensionality of the ethos/source credibility construct and the associated plethora of empirical studies in the 1960s and 1970s, Aristotle's dimension of “goodwill” has been dismissed by many contemporary theorists and researchers. It is argued that this occurred as a result of errors made in the earlier empirical research and that “goodwill” can be measured, contrary to earlier claims, and should be restored to its former status in rhetorical communication theory. Empirical research is reported indicating the existence of the goodwill dimension as part of the structure of the ethos/source credibility construct and a measure of that dimension is provided with evidence for its reliability and validity.
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The credibility scale was adapted from a validated scale by McCroskey and Teven.
“The scale originates from a widely cited study by McCroskey and Teven that validated a credibility scale composed of 3 related dimensions—goodwill (caring), competence, and trustworthiness [2].”
From Effects of Mock Facebook Workday Comments on Public Perception of Professional Credibility: A Field Study in Canada (2019) · cites this paper as [2]
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BackgroundNot Funny? The Effects of Factual Versus Sarcastic Journalistic Responses to Uncivil User Comments
Ziegele, M., & Jost, P. (2020) · Communication Research · doi:10.1177/0093650216671854 · Cited by 82 · see citing works
“Based on previous research on news credibility, journalistic quality, and media brand personality (Kim, Baek, & Martin, 2010; McCroskey & Teven, 1999; Thorson et al., 2010; Urban & Schweiger, 2014), we constructed two scales to measure participants’ evaluations of the credibility of the compact…”
Method“Celebrity 2.0 and beyond!” Effects of Facebook profile sources on social networking advertising
Jin, S. A. (2017) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.10.033 · Cited by 93 · see citing works
“Manipulation Stimuli and Experimental Procedure Based on Miller and Allen’s (2012) pretests on female celebrities, Paris Hilton was selected as the target celebrity.”
MethodEffect of Diabetes Online Community Engagement on Health Indicators: Cross-Sectional Study
Litchman, M. L., Edelman, L. S., & Donaldson, G. W. (2018) · JMIR Diabetes · doi:10.2196/diabetes.8603 · Cited by 93 · see citing works
“Moreover, 5 validated instruments were used and included the SF-12v2 [46,48], an adapted version of the Facebook intensity scale [49], an adapted version of the internet social capital scale [50], Self-Care Inventory-Revised (SCI-R) [47], and the source credibility scale [51].”
MethodSpence, P. R., Lachlan, K. A., Westerman, D., & Spates, S. A. (2013) · Howard Journal of Communications · doi:10.1080/10646175.2013.748593 · Cited by 89 · see citing works
Lucia‐Palacios, L., & Pérez‐López, R. (2021) · Journal of Interactive Marketing · doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2021.03.005 · Cited by 89 · see citing works
Rheu, M., Dai, Y. H., Meng, J., & Peng, W. (2024) · Communication Research · doi:10.1177/00936502231221669 · Cited by 91 · see citing works
“Thirteen items from previous studies (Burgoon et al., 1998; Liu & Sundar, 2018; McCroskey & Teven, 1999) were selected to measure participants’ perception of the chatbot’s ability and proficiency in providing supportive communication on a 1 to 7 semantic differential scale (e.g., very inexpert to…”
InfluentialCramer, R. J., Brodsky, S. L., & DeCoster, J. (2009) · PubMed · Cited by 87 · see citing works
Contributing Factors to the Use of Health-Related Websites
Hong, T. J. (2006) · Journal of Health Communication · doi:10.1080/10810730500526679 · Cited by 86 · see citing works
“‘‘Goodwill’’ is also an important credibility dimension because it originally was included in Aristotle’s conception of the speaker’s ‘‘ethos,’’ as well as in initial studies on source credibility (McCroskey & Teven, 1999).”
BackgroundMethodLiu, B., & Wei, L. (2018) · Digital Journalism · doi:10.1080/21670811.2018.1510740 · Cited by 86 · see citing works
Derakhshan, A. (2021) · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Lock, I., & Seele, P. (2017) · Management Communication Quarterly · doi:10.1177/0893318917707592 · Cited by 84 · see citing works
“In addition, validated scales were included in this study to describe the nomological net: trust (Kim, 2001), trustworthiness (McCroskey & Teven, 1999), corporate distrust (Adams, Highhouse, & Zickar, 2010), corporate credibility (Newell & Goldsmith, 2001), and intention to purchase (Yin, 1990).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialPerceptions of Swearing in the Work Setting: An Expectancy Violations Theory Perspective
Johnson, D. I., & Lewis, N. (2010) · Communication Reports · doi:10.1080/08934215.2010.511401 · Cited by 84 · see citing works
“Although these items have not been used previously as a single scale, these are modifications of items (Cai & Wilson, 2000; McCroskey & Teven, 1999) that were deemed by the authors as most relevant to the conceptualization of speaker competence here.”
MethodOn the Conditional Cueing of Credibility Heuristics
Heide, B. L. V. D., & Lim, Y.-S. (2015) · Communication Research · doi:10.1177/0093650214565915 · Cited by 86 · see citing works
Jin, S. A., Phua, J., & Lee, K. M. (2015) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.12.046 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
Schaewitz, L., Kluck, J. P., Klösters, L., & Krämer, N. C. (2020) · Mass Communication & Society · doi:10.1080/15205436.2020.1716983 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
“News source credibility was measured by the dimensions of competence (e.g., 1 = intelligent – 7 = unintelligent; inverted; α = .90) and trustworthiness (e.g., 1 = honest – 7 = dishonest; inverted; α = .92) on 12 adjectives (McCroskey & Teven, 1999).”
MethodWalther, J. B., Liang, Y. J., Ganster, T., Wohn, D. Y., & Emington, J. (2012) · Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication · doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01595.x · Cited by 83 · see citing works
“A modified version of the source credibility scale (McCroskey & Teven, 1999) assessed participants’ final attitude about the sources’ trustworthiness using four 7-interval items ( honest/dishonest, trustworthy/untrustworthy, moral/immoral, ethical/unethical ).”
Bode, L., Vraga, E. K., & Tully, M. (2020) · Science Communication · doi:10.1177/1075547020981375 · Cited by 86 · see citing works
“…trustworthy, extremely expert/not at all expert, extremely sincere/not at all sincere, concerned about society/not concerned about society, and extremely knowledgeable/not at all knowledgeable, each measured on 5-point scales (adapted from McCroskey & Teven, 1999; see also, Westerman et al., 2014).”
BackgroundR U Able to Meat Me: The Impact of Students’ Overly Casual Email Messages to Instructors
Stephens, K. K., Houser, M. L., & Cowan, R. L. (2009) · Communication Education · doi:10.1080/03634520802582598 · Cited by 81 · see citing works
Park, H. W., Barnett, G. A., & Nam, I. (2002) · Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.10072 · Cited by 81 · see citing works
Searching for questions, original thoughts, or advancing theory: Human-machine communication
Spence, P. R. (2018) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2018.09.014 · Cited by 80 · see citing works
Trust: Recent concepts and evaluations in human-robot interaction
Law, T., & Scheutz, M. J. (2020) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-819472-0.00002-2 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
The Effects of Agency Assignment and Reference Point on Responses to COVID-19 Messages
Ma, H., & Miller, C. H. (2020) · Health Communication · doi:10.1080/10410236.2020.1848066 · Cited by 79 · see citing works
- Authors
- McCroskey, J. C., & Teven, J. J.
- Affiliations
- West Virginia University (US)
- Northwest Missouri State University (US)
- Venue
- Communication Monographs
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1999-03
- Volume
- 66
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 90-103
- ISSN
- 0363-7751 (ISSN-L)
- 1479-5787
- OpenAlex
- W1992262987
- Cited by
- 1,236
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 100 · 2025: 99 · 2024: 80 · 2023: 86 · 2022: 96 · 2021: 99 · 2020: 84 · 2019: 90 · 2018: 65 · 2017: 48 · 2016: 63 · 2015: 56 · 2014: 46 · 2013: 43 · 2012: 24
- FWCI
- 36.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Communication Monographs (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Rhetoric and Communication Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Linguistics and Discourse Analysis
- Social Sciences › Communication › Communication Studies and Media
- Keywords
- goodwill, ethos, source credibility
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