IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v8y2020i2p401-412.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Scientific Uncertainty in News Articles Affect Readers’ Trust and Decision-Making?

Author

Listed:
  • Friederike Hendriks

    (Department of Psychology and Sport Studies, University of Münster, Germany)

  • Regina Jucks

    (Department of Psychology and Sport Studies, University of Münster, Germany)

Abstract

Even though a main goal of science is to reduce the uncertainty in scientific results by applying ever-improving research methods, epistemic uncertainty is an integral part of science. As such, while uncertainty might be communicated in news articles about climate science, climate skeptics have also exploited this uncertainty to cast doubt on science itself. We performed two studies to assess whether scientific uncertainty affects laypeople’s assessments of issue uncertainty, the credibility of the information, their trust in scientists and climate science, and impacts their decision-making. In addition, we addressed how these effects are influenced by further information on relevant scientific processes, because knowing that uncertainty goes along with scientific research could ease laypeople’s interpretations of uncertainty around evidence and may even protect against negative impacts of such uncertainty on trust. Unexpectedly, in study 1, after participants read both a text about research methods and a news article that included scientific uncertainty, they had lower trust in the scientists’ assertions than when they read the uncertain news article alone (but this did not impact trust in climate science or decision-making). In study 2, we tested whether these results occurred due to participants overestimating the scientific uncertainty at hand. Hence, we varied the framing of uncertainty in the text on scientific processes. We found that exaggerating the scientific uncertainty produced by scientific processes (vs. framing the uncertainty as something to be expected) did not negatively affect participants’ trust ratings. However, the degree to which participants preferred effortful reasoning on problems (intellective epistemic style) correlated with ratings of trust in scientists and climate science and with their decision-making. In sum, there was only little evidence that the introduction of uncertainty in news articles would affect participants’ ratings of trust and their decision-making, but their preferred style of reasoning did.

Suggested Citation

  • Friederike Hendriks & Regina Jucks, 2020. "Does Scientific Uncertainty in News Articles Affect Readers’ Trust and Decision-Making?," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(2), pages 401-412.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v8:y:2020:i:2:p:401-412
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v8i2.2824
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/2824
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v8i2.2824?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v8:y:2020:i:2:p:401-412. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.