School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia; The Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, Australia.
School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia.
Eur J Med Genet. 2021 Jan;64(1):104119. doi: 10.1016/j.ejmg.2020.104119. Epub 2020 Dec 4.
Genetic research, via the mainstream media, presents the public with novel, profound findings almost on a daily basis. However, it is not clear how much laypeople understand these presentations and how they integrate such new findings into their knowledge base. Genetic knowledge (GK), existing causal beliefs, and genetic essentialist tendencies (GET) have been implicated in such processes; the current study assesses the relationships between these elements and how brief presentations of media releases of scientific findings about genetics are consumed and affect the readers.
An Australian national survey of GK, GET, and existing causal beliefs about health phenomena (heart disease and obesity) was conducted. Participants were also exposed to news headlines that offered genetic and non-genetic partial explanations of the same health phenomena and reported their evaluations of these headlines, as well as the effects of the headlines on their personal understanding of the health phenomena.
GK was negatively-associated with GET. Whereas GK did not directly predict the evaluation and effects of the genetic headlines, GET did. GK predicted the effects of the headlines indirectly via GET and via GET and existing causal beliefs.
GET seem to predict unwarranted effects of exposure to news headlines about genetic science, whereas GK seems to indirectly mitigate the same unwarranted effects.
通过主流媒体进行的遗传研究几乎每天都向公众呈现新颖而深刻的发现。然而，目前尚不清楚外行人对这些介绍的理解程度，以及他们如何将这些新发现融入自己的知识库。遗传知识（GK）、现有的因果信念和遗传本质主义倾向（GET）都与这些过程有关；本研究评估了这些因素之间的关系，以及对媒体发布的关于遗传学的科学发现的简要介绍的接受和影响读者的方式。
对澳大利亚全国范围内的 GK、GET 和现有的关于健康现象（心脏病和肥胖症）的因果信念进行了调查。参与者还接触了提供相同健康现象的遗传和非遗传部分解释的新闻标题，并报告了他们对这些标题的评价，以及标题对他们个人对健康现象的理解的影响。
GK 与 GET 呈负相关。尽管 GK 并没有直接预测遗传标题的评价和影响，但 GET 却可以。GK 通过 GET 和 GET 以及现有的因果信念来间接预测标题的影响。
GET 似乎预测了接触遗传科学新闻标题的不合理影响，而 GK 似乎间接减轻了同样不合理的影响。
