Effects of Scanning Health News Headlines on Trust in Science: An Emotional Framing Perspective

• In Event: HIGH-DENSITY: Message Effects Research in Health Contexts

Abstract

Despite concerns about presenting health news with exaggerated emotion (e.g., fear, hope), there has been scant attention to the implications of such presentations on audience responses. This research examines how exposure to different “diets” of emotionally-framed health news (i.e., fear, hope, anger, and control) influences readers’ impressions of health threats, credibility judgments of both the news and scientific communities, and their preventative health behavior intentions. In an online experiment with 327 adults via MTurk, participants scanned 20 health news headlines, half of which reflected the target emotion and the remainder reflected more neutral themes. Results revealed that those exposed to more hope-framed headlines not only felt more hope, but that hope, in turn, associated with more trust in both science and news and greater prevention behavior intentions. These associations were stronger than those for fear and anger, which evidenced quite different patterns of results. Practical implications are discussed.

Authors

• Robin Nabi, UC-Santa Barbara

• Abel Thomas Gustafson, U of California, Santa Barbara

• Debora Daniela Perez Torres, University of California, Santa Barbara