I think it's somewhat context-dependent, but people do have a general preference that applies across situations.
Particularly if it's a topic where you don't have the expertise needed to evaluate what someone says, falling back on presentational heuristics is pretty common. For Wolfram, I'm not a dual-PhD in math and physics, so I think I'm not qualified to really understand his claims. Thus thinking "this person's communication style makes me think of people who're exaggerating their achievements" colors my view of his likely correctness -- not enough to come out and say he's wrong myself (since I don't know), but rather to make me sit back and wait for someone who sounds more trustworthy to validate it.
I do admit it's a difficult situation, because if you do sincerely believe that you've come up with something that'll revolutionize all of science, it's difficult to say that in a humble way. (I feel I could do better at that than Wolfram, though, particularly if we take this article as representative of his style. :D)
To continue the Trump analogy... a lot of the people who believed what he was saying didn't have any deep knowledge of, say, immigration policy; they just heard someone who was giving (to them) "I am a confident and capable person" signals who was saying something was important, and they trusted that in part because of this bias.
Particularly if it's a topic where you don't have the expertise needed to evaluate what someone says, falling back on presentational heuristics is pretty common. For Wolfram, I'm not a dual-PhD in math and physics, so I think I'm not qualified to really understand his claims. Thus thinking "this person's communication style makes me think of people who're exaggerating their achievements" colors my view of his likely correctness -- not enough to come out and say he's wrong myself (since I don't know), but rather to make me sit back and wait for someone who sounds more trustworthy to validate it.
I do admit it's a difficult situation, because if you do sincerely believe that you've come up with something that'll revolutionize all of science, it's difficult to say that in a humble way. (I feel I could do better at that than Wolfram, though, particularly if we take this article as representative of his style. :D)
To continue the Trump analogy... a lot of the people who believed what he was saying didn't have any deep knowledge of, say, immigration policy; they just heard someone who was giving (to them) "I am a confident and capable person" signals who was saying something was important, and they trusted that in part because of this bias.