Public Perceptions of Food Contamination Risks: A Simulation Experiment on the Psychological Impact of Incident Severity and Intentionality.

How do consumers perceive risks associated with food contamination? How do they respond to foodborne illness outbreaks and food recalls resulting from food contamination? We report findings from an experiment (N = 1,010) in which participants were exposed to a simulated news report on a food contamination incident that had led to a foodborne illness outbreak and voluntary food recalls. Two characteristics of the food contamination incident were experimentally manipulated - severity (i.e., how serious the consequences of the incident were) and intentionality (i.e., whether the incident was caused by an accident or an intentional act to harm). We found that higher severity generally led to higher risk perceptions and risk-reduction intentions. A contamination incident attributed to an intentional act to harm, as opposed to an accident, caused greater intentions to temporarily reduce consumption of the contaminated food and to seek out more information, but only when incident severity was relatively low. Implications of these findings for effectively communicating food contamination risks are discussed.

African American Parents' Perceived Vaccine Efficacy Moderates the Effect of Message Framing on Psychological Reactance to HPV Vaccine Advocacy.

This experiment assessed how the frame of promotional vaccine messages elicited psychological reactance differently for African American parents according to their level of perceived vaccine efficacy. We found that those with low perceived HPV vaccine efficacy experienced more psychological reactance in response to loss-framed messages compared to gain-framed messages, whereas message framing made little difference for those with high perceived HPV vaccine efficacy. In addition, the interaction between frame and perceived HPV vaccine efficacy indirectly affected parents' intentions to vaccinate their child for HPV via reactance. These results support current theorizing about framing effects under defensive message processing specifically as it applies to psychological reactance.

Influence of Risk Severity and Intentionality on Perceptions of Food Contamination Risks among Pregnant Women: An Experimental Investigation.

Given the potential for severe health consequences of consuming contaminated foods during pregnancy, effective communication of food contamination risks to pregnant women is especially important. This study examines pregnant women's risk perceptions and intentions to adopt risk-reduction behaviors following exposure to a simulated news story about a food contamination incident. The news story was experimentally manipulated to depict the severity of the incident as high or low and the cause of the incident as accidental or intentional. Results showed that both severity and intentionality of the incident elevated pregnant women's perceptions of getting sick as well as their intentions to temporarily reduce consumption of the contaminated food product and to seek more information. Implications of these findings for effectively communicating food contamination risks to pregnant women are discussed.

The role of trust in health information from medical authorities in accepting the HPV vaccine among African American parents.

This research examines how and why trust in health information from medical authorities (i.e., doctors or health care professionals and government health agencies) predicts acceptance of the HPV vaccine for one's child among African American parents. A survey of African American parents recruited from community venues revealed that low trust in health information from government health agencies was associated with less favorable attitudes and intentions toward vaccinating their child against HPV. Trust in health information from a doctor or health care professional did not predict vaccine acceptance. Mediation analyses indicated that the relationship between trust in health information from government health agencies and vaccine acceptance was partially mediated by perceived vaccine efficacy. Implications of the findings on communicating to the African American community about the HPV vaccine are discussed.

Parental Support for HPV Vaccination Mandates Among African Americans: The Impact of Message Framing and Consideration of Future Consequences.

Is parents' support for mandating human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination for their adolescent children influenced by how the policy advocacy message is framed? In this research, we conducted an experiment in which a group of African-American parents were exposed to messages advocating HPV vaccination mandates that were framed in either gains or losses. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering the personality trait - consideration of future consequences - when assessing the efficacy of gain- and loss-framed health advocacy. We found that parents responded more positively to gain-frames if they focused on the distant future and to loss-frames if they focused on the immediate future. Thus, it is important to recognize that public support of HPV vaccination policy is not only contingent on the message-based educational strategy employed to parent, but on the degree to which parents consider how present behaviors influence future well-being.

Biased assimilation and need for closure: examining the effects of mixed blogs on vaccine-related beliefs.

This study examines the effect of mixed online information, in the form of user-generated blogs, related to the HPV vaccine on perceived efficacy and safety of this vaccine. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of biased assimilation and need for closure, this research hypothesizes that exposure to mixed blogs about the HPV vaccine will lead to polarization of HPV vaccine-related beliefs among individuals with opposing prior opinions about vaccination and that the polarizing effects will be most pronounced among those high in need for closure. A controlled experiment (N = 338) found support for the hypotheses with regard to efficacy beliefs but not with regard to safety beliefs. Implications for health communication research and practice are discussed.

Characterization of MRP RNA-protein interactions within the perinucleolar compartment.

The perinucleolar compartment (PNC) forms in cancer cells and is highly enriched with a subset of polymerase III RNAs and RNA-binding proteins. Here we report that PNC components mitochondrial RNA-processing (MRP) RNA, pyrimidine tract-binding protein (PTB), and CUG-binding protein (CUGBP) interact in vivo, as demonstrated by coimmunoprecipitation and RNA pull-down experiments. Glycerol gradient analyses show that this complex is large and sediments at a different fraction from known MRP RNA-containing complexes, the MRP ribonucleoprotein ribozyme and human telomerase reverse transcriptase. Tethering PNC components to a LacO locus recruits other PNC components, further confirming the in vivo interactions. These interactions are present both in PNC-containing and -lacking cells. High-resolution localization analyses demonstrate that MRP RNA, CUGBP, and PTB colocalize at the PNC as a reticulated network, intertwining with newly synthesized RNA. Furthermore, green fluorescent protein (GFP)-PTB and GFP-CUGBP show a slower rate of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching at the PNC than in the nucleoplasm, illustrating the different molecular interaction of the complexes associated with the PNC. These findings support a working model in which the MRP RNA-protein complex becomes nucleated at the PNC in cancer cells and may play a role in gene expression regulation at the DNA locus that associates with the PNC.