TY - JOUR
T1 - Using General Messages to Persuade on a Politicized Scientific Issue
AU - Green, Jon
AU - Druckman, James N.
AU - Baum, Matthew A.
AU - Lazer, David
AU - Ognyanova, Katherine
AU - Simonson, Matthew D.
AU - Lin, Jennifer
AU - Santillana, Mauricio
AU - Perlis, Roy H.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2023/4/24
Y1 - 2023/4/24
N2 - Politics and science have become increasingly intertwined. Salient scientific issues, such as climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research, become politicized, pitting partisans against one another. This creates a challenge of how to effectively communicate on such issues. Recent work emphasizes the need for tailored messages to specific groups. Here, we focus on whether generalized messages also can matter. We do so in the context of a highly polarized issue: extreme COVID-19 vaccine resistance. The results show that science-based, moral frame, and social norm messages move behavioral intentions, and do so by the same amount across the population (that is, homogeneous effects). Counter to common portrayals, the politicization of science does not preclude using broad messages that resonate with the entire population.
AB - Politics and science have become increasingly intertwined. Salient scientific issues, such as climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research, become politicized, pitting partisans against one another. This creates a challenge of how to effectively communicate on such issues. Recent work emphasizes the need for tailored messages to specific groups. Here, we focus on whether generalized messages also can matter. We do so in the context of a highly polarized issue: extreme COVID-19 vaccine resistance. The results show that science-based, moral frame, and social norm messages move behavioral intentions, and do so by the same amount across the population (that is, homogeneous effects). Counter to common portrayals, the politicization of science does not preclude using broad messages that resonate with the entire population.
KW - COVID-19
KW - descriptive norms
KW - machine learning
KW - moral values
KW - public health
KW - science communication
KW - survey experiment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85159352129&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/s0007123422000424
DO - 10.1017/s0007123422000424
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AN - SCOPUS:85159352129
SN - 0007-1234
VL - 53
SP - 698
EP - 706
JO - British Journal of Political Science
JF - British Journal of Political Science
IS - 2
ER -