I'm very firm believer of instinctual credibility though I am not sure whether it is entirely based on sexual attraction, stature and dress. Personally I tend to base the credibility of others on smaller non-verbal cues, body language is an amazing thing, for example if someone is leaning forward into a conversation with someone else and motioning with their hands while they talk I am more likely to consider them credible then someone sitting straight and speaking in a monotone. That may not make sense to most of you but I believe that if you're passionate about something you are more likely to be well informed about that subject matter. Conversely bad body language can put me off intelligent and well spoken people, if someone I have just met invades my personal space (most Australians have an extremely large area of personal space) it makes me uncomfortable and they loose a small amount of credibility for not noticing this and reacting accordingly.
I think for me these reactions are close to subconcious, I've never really thought about how I select the people I choose to believe.
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Taking that a step further, if you know something about the person before you meet them (perhaps someone has talked about them before you met them) how much does that affect how you? If you're a female and your friend told you about how good her boyfriend is in bed, would that make you more receptive to his conversation when you finally get to meet him? If your buddy bitches and rags on someone, how will that affect you when you finally meet that person.
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I can honestly say that the opinions of my friends don't effect me in the slightest when it comes to meeting new people. I have people my friends all adore and yet when I met them I developed an instinctual and strong dislike for them and the opposite has also happened. My friends have all said a guy is gorgeous then when I meet him he tries to convince me that you only need to worry about skin cancer if you live directly under a hole in the ozone layer, after a comment like that it would take ALOT to make me consider him credible no matter how pretty he may be.
Maybe this is due due to having been judged on stereotypes so much myself, no offence to Martian or anyone that works in sales but I hate salesmen, specifically computer salesmen. Just because I am female does not mean that I know nothing about computers or gaming, if I come into the store and ask for the exact model of graphics card I am looking for then it's generally what I want, not the less expensive one that won't actually work with the rest of my system, I appreciate they're trying to save me money but just give me what I asked for. I've actually come close to yelling at a sales clerk before when he didn't seem to understand that NO I did not want them to install my new video card for me and NO I did not want to drop my system off I was more then capable of connecting, installing and getting the necessary drivers by myself.
I guess having been exposed to these beliefs helps me to judge individuals as individuals, I like to think that generally my choices in this regard are fairly good.