Communicating scientific uncertainty in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: A message experiment.

The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. It was a time of significant uncertainty as experts were not yet certain whether social distancing behaviors were necessary to slow the spread of the virus. Some public communicators opted to acknowledge uncertainty based on the limited evidence, whereas others downplayed uncertainty. This situation provided researchers with an opportunity to advance theory by explicating and testing cognitive responses to message uncertainty. Immediately following the WHO declaration (March 13-19, 2020), U.S. adults (N = 1186) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions in a 2 (message uncertainty: low, high) × 3 (argument support: expert, threat, precedent) between-participants experiment. Overall, perceived uncertainty negatively mediated the impact of message uncertainty on intentions. However, participant education was a key moderator. For those with more than a high school education, uncertain messages were related to higher intentions to social distance through increased critical reflection. For those with a high school education or less, uncertain messages were related to lower intentions through decreased message credibility.

People Wear Masks when they Ski: Comparing Congruent and Incongruent Behavioral Context Appeals.

When advocating for a behavior, persuasive messaging typically focuses on the context that behavior is performed in, such as mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, situating the advocated behavior in a different context, termed an incongruent context appeal, may persuade by increasing attention, novelty, and memorability. The current study tested this supposition in a message experiment. Participants (N = 324) were randomized to view an incongruent context (e.g. skiing) or a congruent context (i.e. COVID-19) appeal advocating for mask wearing. The incongruence appeal had a direct, positive effect on mask wearing intentions and indirect, positive effects via two serial mediation pathways: time spent with the message increased attention through novelty and memorability. Findings suggest that an incongruent context appeal is an effective strategy for persuading audiences in information-saturated environments like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Developing skin cancer education materials for darker skin populations: crowdsourced design, message targeting, and acral lentiginous melanoma.

Despite decreased susceptibility, darker skin individuals who develop melanoma have worse survival. This disparity in melanoma mortality is the largest for any cancer, and partly driven by a lack of patient education materials targeted to darker skin populations in whom acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM) is the most common subtype. To address this communication disparity, the current study reports a multi-phase design process that leverages crowdsourcing and message testing to develop ALM-focused patient education materials for darker skin populations. Crowdsourced design was utilized to develop a pool of designs (phase 1), the pool was narrowed and thematically analyzed (phase 2), and select designs were evaluated via a message experiment (N = 1877). For darker skin populations, designs that depicted people enhanced knowledge of ALM through message memorability. The current study engages melanoma disparities by providing ALM patient education materials for darker skin populations vetted via a multi-phase process.

Eye-Tracking and Adolescent Interest in Alcohol Responsibility Messages: The Message Matters.

OBJECTIVE: Through the use of eye-tracking technology, this study explores the efficacy of current alcohol responsibility messages viewed by adolescents and proposes the development of new alcohol warning message design. METHOD: An adolescent sample (N = 121; 72 males) was shown 14 advertisements (4 alcohol, 10 non-alcohol) in randomized order featuring messages modified by type size, type contrast, and message content (a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design). RESULTS: Results suggested that modifying message content to include direct language and a consequence enhances recall and attention to alcohol responsibility messages among adolescents. No significant differences in attentional outcomes were observed for messages that included variances in type size or type contrast. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, to increase attention to and recall of alcohol responsibility messages, the greatest efficacy lies in varying the message itself, irrespective of size or contrast.