Affiliation:
1. National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan
Abstract
This article examines responses to news stories that cover novel (vs. familiar) or contradictory (vs. one-sided) health research findings. Drawing on motivated reasoning and uncertainty management literature, this article proposes that novel and contradictory health research news stories arouse uncertainty and confusion and thus trigger motivated reasoning. People discount the credibility of the target news and express less willingness to adopt the advocated behaviors. In addition, people devalue health research by strengthening their beliefs that scientific research is uncertain, which lowers their attitudes toward health research. A large telephone survey of the general public and two experiments test these predictions.
Subject
Sociology and Political Science
Cited by
72 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献