Perspective Change in a Time of Crisis

Communicating scientific uncertainty in the early stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic: A message experiment

“…This means that the messages with high uncertainty yielded positive behavior intentions through critical reflection in the participants with at least some college education. These findings illustrate the importance of creating messages that promote critical reflections, similar in line with Lillie et al (2021). Despite its demonstrated utility in the fields of education and psychology, its usage in communication studies is limited (Tikka & Oinas-Kukkonen, 2019).…”

“…The critical reflection scale (Lillie et al., 2021) assesses participant level of agreement on a five‐point Likert scale anchored by “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Participants indicated their level of agreement to the following statements regarding the message they saw: “made me think carefully about things I believed,” “challenged ideas I had about the world,” “encouraged me to reflect on my beliefs,” and “helped me to think carefully about complicated ideas” ( M = 3.31, SD = 0.99; α = 0.87).…”

“…Critical reflection, on the other hand, involves making an assessment about the stimulus. As it has been defined, critical reflection is “the interrogation of one's assumptions and beliefs and well as the founding or causes of those assumptions and beliefs” (Lillie et al., 2021, p. 243). Through critical reflection, an individual may seek to understand their current position as well as the position of others.…”

“…Lastly, research on critical reflection has noted its potential to influence behavior, such that it aligns with the message (Gardner et al., 2006). More specifically, critical reflection in response to narrative messages was associated with social distancing intentions (Lillie et al., 2021). Considering the effects of message uncertainty on each of the specified cognitive responses together with the observed effects of these variables on behavioral intention, we reason that perceived uncertainty, message credibility, perceived hype, and critical reflection may mediate the effects of message uncertainty on behavioral intention.…”

“…Research on the effects of COVID‐19 messaging has recommended the inclusion of education and political affiliation as potential moderators in future research (Lillie et al., 2021), given their influence on COVID‐19 behavioral outcomes, as previously described. Moreover, the two have previously functioned as moderators in uncertainty research.…”