Trust in science moderates the effects of high/low threat communication on psychological reactance to COVID-19-related public health messages

ABSTRACT

Background

As illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, communicating evidence-based health recommendations represents a tremendous challenge; among some recipients, public health messages can cause anger and negative cognitions, also known as psychological reactance, and consequently lead to negative attitudes and low intentions to perform the promoted behavior. The present study investigated the role of message characteristics (i.e. high vs. low freedom-threat messages), individuals’ trust in science (i.e. high vs. low trust in science), and their interaction in determining responses to public health messages.

Methods

We conducted an experimental study, in which participants (N = 228) with high or low trust in science were exposed to high or low freedom-threat messages promoting mask-wearing to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and regular physical activity.

Results

We found support for the notion that messages imposing high threat to freedom lead to higher state psychological reactance, and more negative attitudes and behavioral intentions. Moreover, our results showed that trust in science has a main and interaction effect (together with message characteristics) on state reactance, behavioral intentions, and – to a lesser degree – attitudes, in the case of COVID-19, but not physical activity messages. The findings remained the same regardless of controlling for other relevant variables.

Conclusions

While our study has some limitations, such as a rather homogeneous sample, a limited number of experimental stimuli, and a relatively artificial experimental environment, it offers some insight into the important role of health communication recipients’ trust in science and provides advice on how to communicate health recommendations to skeptics.

KEYWORDS:

• Trust in science
• psychological reactance
• health communication
• COVID-19
• physical activity

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Ivona Balent, Tanja Goltnik, Tina Goznik, and Tinkara Koračin for their help with coding participants’ responses to the negative cognitions prompts.

Author contribution

NP was involved in conceptualization of the study, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing of the original draft, and reviewing and editing of the manuscript. BM was involved in conceptualization of the study, methodology, and reviewing and editing of the manuscript.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, NP, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics

The University of Maribor’s Faculty of Arts institutional ethics committee approved this study on August 31st, 2022 (ID: 038-33-123/2022/8/FFUM). All participants provided informed consent.

Notes

1 Participants were given the average Slovenian net salary (which was 1.236 EUR at the time of the study) for comparison.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nejc Plohl

Nejc Plohl is a PhD student as well as a research and teaching assistant at the Department of Psychology, University of Maribor, Slovenia. His research focuses on social and health psychology, with a particular emphasis on attitudes towards science and technology.

Bojan Musil

Bojan Musil is an associate professor and researcher at the Department of Psychology, University of Maribor, Slovenia. His primary research interests are cross-cultural studies of values and value orientations, personality concepts, health, educational studies, and computer-mediated communication.