School of Psychology.
School of Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2019 Dec;25(4):517-542. doi: 10.1037/xap0000232. Epub 2019 Jun 27.
Science stories in the media are strongly linked to changes in health-related behavior. Science writers (including journalists, press officers, and researchers) must therefore frame their stories to communicate scientific caution without disrupting coherence and disengaging the reader. In this study we investigate whether caveats ("Further research is needed to validate the results") satisfy this dual requirement. In four experiments participants read news reports with and without caveats. In Experiments 1 to 3, participants judged how cautious or confident researchers were, and how interesting or comprehensible they found the reports. News reports with caveats were judged as more cautious that those without, but levels of reader interest and comprehensibility were unaffected. In a fourth experiment, we created a mock newsroom and recruited journalism students to make judgments about which press releases should be published. Here, neither caveats nor the introduction of qualifying expressions in headlines had an effect on judgments of newsworthiness, consistent with Experiments 1 to 3. The reasons participants gave for rejecting a press release rarely referred to the caveat. Our results therefore suggest that science writers should include caveats in news reporting and that they can do so without fear of disengaging their readers or losing news uptake. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
媒体中的科学故事与健康相关行为的变化密切相关。因此，科学作家（包括记者、新闻官员和研究人员）必须构建他们的故事，既要传达科学谨慎，又要保持连贯性，避免读者失去兴趣。在这项研究中，我们调查了警示语（“进一步的研究是必要的，以验证结果”）是否满足这一双重要求。在四项实验中，参与者阅读了带有和不带有警示语的新闻报道。在实验 1 到 3 中，参与者判断研究人员有多谨慎或自信，以及他们对报道的兴趣和理解程度。带有警示语的新闻报道被认为比没有警示语的报道更谨慎，但读者的兴趣和理解程度不受影响。在第四个实验中，我们创建了一个模拟新闻编辑室，并招募了新闻专业的学生来判断哪些新闻稿应该发布。在这里，警示语和标题中的限定词的引入都没有对新闻价值的判断产生影响，与实验 1 到 3 的结果一致。参与者拒绝发布新闻稿的原因很少涉及警示语。因此，我们的研究结果表明，科学作家应该在新闻报道中包含警示语，而且他们可以这样做，而不必担心失去读者或降低新闻关注度。（APA 心理学数据库记录（c）2019，保留所有权利）。
