Poster #242 - Parental Attitudes Toward Online Parenting Information: Do Parents Trust Family Scientists?

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Technology, Media & Child Development

Integrative Statement

Topics that have long benefited from scientific consensus, including vaccinations, genetically modified organisms, and global warming, are now openly criticized by nonscientists that foment distrust in science, which in turn leads to a knowledge gap between scientists and the general public. Family science is not isolated from this phenomenon. For example, well-publicized research has consistently shown that spanking poses significant harm to children, yet over 80% of parents still spank their children.

Although disseminating science in news appears to be an efficient way to spread information about healthy parenting, it may fail when the topic is controversial because disagreeing online comments form ‘echo chambers’ in which the disagreement about a topic is repeatedly shared online by readers. For example, an analysis of online comments discussing an article about spanking found that most commenters disagreed with the research, and some expressed contempt for the researcher. These echo chambers may cause confirmation bias—parents who disagree with the topic and see others disagree may disregard the information being presented. The current study tested this by examining parents’ trust in a spanking expert quoted in news online versus parent comments that either agreed or disagreed with the expert, and examined whether this differed by parents’ attitudes toward spanking.

Using Amazon’s MTurk, 180 parents read researcher-generated news articles about spanking. Participants were randomly assigned to an article quoting anti-spanking parent comments or an article quoting pro-spanking parent comments. Both articles discussed the detriments of spanking from an expert. Parents rated independently the trustworthiness of the expert and parent comments on a 1 (very untrustworthy) to 5 (very trustworthy) scale. Before reading the article, parents reported their attitudes toward spanking. Final attitude scores were transformed into a dichotomous moderator by splitting the sample by the score of 4 (neither agree nor disagree) forming a “high-endorsers” group (n = 53, M = 5.02, SD = .68) and a “low-endorsers” group (n = 127, M = 2.07, SD = .99).

Regression was used to test mean differences adjusting for covariates (see Figure 1 and Table 1). Comparing between moderator groups, results demonstrated that low-endorsers trusted the expert more than high-endorsers, and high-endorsers trusted the pro-spanking comments more than low-endorsers. Comparing within moderator groups, low-endorsers trusted the expert more than pro-spanking comments and trusted the expert and anti-spanking comments equally. In contrast, high-endorsers had no significant differences in trust between the expert and the comments.

The data show a relative distrust in scientific information about the harms of spanking in parents who hold positive attitudes toward spanking. These results highlight a potential failure of news coverage of controversial scientific information—if individuals who hold contradicting beliefs to a scientific fact notice others holding that same belief, they may discount the information provided by the expert. Research is needed to determine the best ways to frame controversial scientific information in news online and to prevent echo chambers of negative comments from occurring so that those who hold contrary beliefs may begin to consider changing their perspectives.

Authors

• Justin Kyle Scott, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Gershoff, University of Texas-Austin
  Non-Presenting Author