Decision-making during a crisis: the interplay of narratives and statistical information before and after crisis communication

Abstract

Decision-making during a crisis is affected by several sources of information and prior knowledge, such as factual (statistical) information, narratives of others, and real-time governmental messages. The present study investigated how two types of information (statistics and narratives) influence helping behavior after the occurrence of a traffic accident. We used a scripted crisis scenario in a virtual environment, where several types of behavior could be measured. The main dependent variable was whether participants would move the victim or not. By moving the victim, he would be rescued from a potentially unsafe position (the tilted truck could contain poisonous substances), but moving also entailed a risk of increased injury (according to the statistical information the most likely consequence). Our results indicate that more victims were moved in the narrative condition before an official message was received. Participants who had received statistical information or both types of information performed similar to the control condition. After the official message, informing participants to keep distance, more victims were moved in the narrative condition and in the combined narrative and statistical condition. A narrative therefore has stronger effects when (information about) the actual situation matches the narrative's content. In contrast with our expectations, affective response did not mediate the relationship between narrative information and moving victims. An alternative explanation would be that narratives trigger a more heuristic way of information processing.Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast on 29 August 2005. It was by far the most expensive natural disaster with damages of over $100 billion, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history with over 1200 deaths (Galea et al. 2008). Two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, local governments spread information about the actual situation and evacuation orders via news broadcasts. As evaluation studies of the incident showed, however, people's decision to evacuate was not only affected by information provided by the government, but also by narratives of relatives and other members of people's social networks (Messias, Barrington, and Lacy 2012).The information that individuals use to make their decision during a crisis is not only from different sources (e.g. government and family), but also of different types. On the one hand, official information ARTICLE HISTORY

Recalibrating pandemic risk leadership: Thirteen crisis ready strategies for COVID-19

“…Further information can also be conveyed on how they are to be achieved, and what role different parties may respectively play in achieving 'the plan' (Drury et al 2019). This may also include providing information about what criteria will be used for different emergency response measures, such as bringing lockdowns into effect, as opposed to simply giving instructions with vital information 'dripped down' to implement specific parts of the plan on a 'need to know' basis (Bakker et al 2019).…”

Telling the tale: the role of narratives in helping people respond to crises

“…Participants in the control condition did not receive additional text, following the precedent of similarly designed narrative studies (e.g. Bakker et al, 2018;Falzon et al, 2015;Lemal & Van den Bulck, 2010;Prati et al, 2012).…”

You don’t have to tell a story! A registered report testing the effectiveness of narrative versus non-narrative misinformation corrections

“…For example, Shelby and Ernst ( 2013 ) argued that part of the reason why some misconceptions are common among the public is that disinformants use the power of storytelling, while fact-checkers often rely exclusively on facts and evidence. Indeed, people seem to be influenced by anecdotes and stories more so than stated facts or statistical evidence in their medical decision-making (Bakker et al 2019 ; Fagerlin et al 2005 ), risk perceptions (Betsch et al 2013 ; de Wit et al 2008 ; Haase et al 2015 ), behavioral intentions and choices (Borgida and Nisbett 1977 ; Dillard et al 2018 ), and attitudes (Lee and Leets 2002 ).…”