How Motivated Reasoning and Temporal Cues Polarize the Acceptance of One Health Risk Messages

• In Event: Risk Communication and Health

Abstract

Using a web-based, randomized experiment with a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 460), we found that temporal frames can intensify or mitigate partisan-motivated cognition in response to public health messages. To be specific, when Republicans were exposed to messages emphasizing anthropogenic responsibility (worldview incongruent argument) for an emergent infectious disease shared by humans and animals (here, Lyme disease), they showed even lower levels of anthropogenic attribution compared with before they read the message. In turn, Republicans showed lower levels of prevention intentions (conservation intentions). Importantly, this worldview backfire occurs when a participant’s psychological mindset is set in a concrete one with a proximal temporal marker (i.e., the disease is a public health threat today) whereas the backfire was not found when the disease was construed in an abstract mindset with a temporally distal marker (i.e., the disease is a public health threat in the next ten years).

Authors

• Sungjong Roh, Cornell University

• Katherine A. McComas, Cornell U

• Laura N. Rickard, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry