The Impact of Science Communication on Public Perceptions and Beliefs about Contested Scientific Topics

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Post by Megan McCullough

The takeaway

Scientific-consensus communication can be a useful tool for making known to the public what the current opinion on scientific topics is among experts, even for contested topics such as global warming and genetically modified foods. This form of scientific communication increased the public’s perception of scientific consensus and belief in scientific facts regarding contested topics.

What's the science?

Inaccurate beliefs can prevent people from taking the necessary steps to tackle certain important societal challenges. Science communication strategies seek to bridge the gap between the scientists who conduct research with the public that benefits from scientific discoveries. One such strategy is scientific-consensus communication, which aims to convey a high level of agreement among scientists on a given topic to the public. Previous research shows that this communication strategy can be a valuable tool for updating personal beliefs about current topics. It is unclear, however, how effective consensus communication is in helping the public understand scientific facts about controversial topics. This week in Psychological Science, Stekelenburg and colleagues aimed to investigate the effects of scientific-consensus communication on public perceptions of scientific consensus and personal beliefs in facts regarding controversial science topics. 

How did they do it?

The authors conducted a meta-analysis on 43 randomized experiments that investigated the effect of scientific-consensus communication on perception and beliefs. The topics presented in the studies were either climate change, genetically modified food, or vaccination. These topics were chosen because public opinion about these topics varies, and the current relevance of these topics led to there being multiple experiments for the authors to analyze. The authors collected articles using electronic databases, examined the reference lists of articles, and contacted authors to ask for other studies. The authors then ran meta-analyses to determine the effects of consensus communication on public perception and beliefs both between topics and overall. Meta-analysis was run because it is an effective research tool; it puts together all the data from multiple experiments to determine the strength of the relationship between variables. The meta-analyses yielded numerous effect sizes, which communicate the strength of the effect of consensus communication on perceptions of consensus and belief in facts related to the three scientific topics.

What did they find?

The authors found that exposing individuals to the current opinion among scientists on contested scientific topics has a positive effect on perceptions of the consensus and on belief in scientific facts. The effect of scientific-consensus communication was more impactful on perception than on personal beliefs. The authors found this result across the three topics; however, since there were limited studies included about vaccination beliefs, there were no conclusions drawn regarding this topic.

What's the impact?

This study found that communicating the current opinions of scientists regarding even contested scientific topics strengthens public perceptions about this consensus as well as belief in facts regarding these topics. This suggests that this is an effective science communication strategy for informing the public about contested science topics such as global warming and genetically modified foods. Effective science communication is a powerful tool for educating the public about scientific topics so that they make informed choices in the future. 

Access the original scientific publication here

Communicating via Video Chat Reduces Inter-Brain Synchrony

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Post by Lani Cupo

The takeaway

Synchronous brain activity between mothers and their young adolescent children is impacted when they are communicating via video chat compared to face-to-face. While communicating over video chat, there was reduced inter-brain synchrony.

What's the science?

Technologically-assisted communication (i.e. video chat or videoconferencing) has become especially prominent over the past few years as constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work, and living far from home necessitate people to connect virtually. Many have reported that connections do not feel the same, or that they experience “Zoom fatigue” after long days on video calls, which may be a result of disruptions to the inter-brain synchrony that underlies human social communication. There is mounting concern that children and adolescents may be especially susceptible to the increased exertion of telecommunication, however, more research is required to investigate the impact of technological communication on developing brains. This week in NeuroImage Schwartz and colleagues used electroencephalograms (EEG) on two brains (mothers and their adolescents) during face-to-face and video chat communications, comparing the synchrony between both conditions.

How did they do it?

140 people (70 mother-child pairs) participated in the study, which took place before the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors filmed all sessions and recorded brain activity from participants with EEG during three conditions: rest, where both participants were in the same room, facing a wall, but not interacting, face-to-face, where participants were in the same room, facing each other, and video chat, where participants were in two separate rooms, communicating through a computer screen. In both interaction conditions, the participants were instructed to discuss a positive topic, either planning a camping trip or planning an amusement park visit. The authors recorded EEG from both the mother and child continuously throughout the experiment. They used a previously defined method of calculating inter-brain connectivity (weighted phase lag index), a technique that aims to reduce correlated noise between participants’ brains that may be caused by shared noise sources, such as sensory stimuli. This is especially important for this study because even in a controlled environment, sensory stimuli in the face-to-face condition may be more similar than in the video-chat condition because participants are in the same room with the same noise sources. The authors also investigated behavioral metrics during both interaction conditions using the well-validated Coding Interactive Behavior manual (CIB). Finally, gaze direction was estimated from the video recordings, coded as either to person, to object, aversion, or unfocused.

What did they find?

Compared to baseline, both face-to-face and video chat communication increased inter-brain connectivity, while rest did not. However, inter-brain connectivity was most enhanced in the face-to-face communication condition, compared to the video chat condition. More specifically, the authors examined 36 possible brain connections between the mother and child’s regions of interest (ROIs). Comparing face-to-face to rest connectivity, they found greater inter-brain connectivity in 9 ROI connections. These ROIs could be categorized into four subgroups, most notably a) both homolog and cross-hemisphere linkage between the mother’s frontal and child’s temporal regions, b) mother’s right frontal region connecting with each of the child's ROIs, and c) the child’s temporal region connecting with mother's frontal and temporal regions. Conducting the same analysis between video chat and rest conditions, the authors report only a single significant connection between the mother’s right frontal and the child’s left temporal regions. This pair of analyses underscore the importance of the mother’s right frontal and child’s left temproal connectivity in mother-child social interactions. Comparing the social communication conditions directly, the authors found a significant difference between groups. Finally, during the face-to-face condition, but not the video chat condition, temporal-temporal synchrony was associated with the mother and child looking at each other, and mother-right-frontal-child-left-temporal connection was associated with the child being empathically engaged.

What's the impact?

This study found that social interaction between mother and child induces synchrony between brain activity in both participants, however, the method of interaction impacts connectivity, with greater synchrony during face-to-face interaction than video chatting or rest. These findings lend insight into the neural processes underlying social communication and highlight a need for future studies to investigate how inter-brain connectivity may change with changing technology.

The Link between Conspiracy Mentality and Political Affiliation

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Post by Megan McCullough

The takeaway

There is a relationship between political affiliation and the tendency to support conspiracy theories, with those on both the extreme left and the extreme right showing a greater conspiracy mentality than those in the political center.

What's the science?

Conspiracy mentality describes the tendency for individuals to endorse conspiracy theories, defined as beliefs that a certain group of people are secretly working together to achieve a malicious goal. Previous studies into the effect of political orientation on conspiracy mentality have shown a U-shaped relationship between political views and conspiracy mentality, suggesting that individuals at both political extremes have a higher tendency to support conspiracy theories than those in the political center. This week in Nature Human Behavior, Imhoff and colleagues used data from 26 countries to conduct the largest study to date into this relationship between political orientation and conspiracy mentality. The authors investigated the relationship between political affiliation and the tendency to support conspiracy theories while controlling for the theory that conspiracy mentality increases among a specific political party when their preferred political party is not in power.

How did they do it?

Data for this study came from two surveys that aimed to investigate the relationship between political leaning and conspiracy mentality. The first survey had a dataset from 23 countries and the second survey had samples from 13 countries, with over 100,000 surveyed individuals between the two surveys. Political orientation was measured using a self-reported scale that asked participants to rank themselves from extremely left-wing to extremely right-wing. Voting intentions were also gathered as a measure of political orientation. Both methods for determining political orientation were used because interpretations of right or left in a political context can be different across countries. Next, the Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire was administered to assess conspiracy mentality in each of the participants. To determine if perceived lack of political control was a factor in the U-shaped relationship seen in previous research, the authors of this study collected whether the preferred political party was in power at the time of data collection and used this along with demographic information as control variables.

What did they find?

The authors found a consistent relationship between political orientation and conspiracy mentality across the 26 countries of study. Individuals at the extreme ends of the political spectrum were more likely to believe in conspiracies compared to individuals in the middle. The U-shaped relationship was not symmetrical; conspiracy mentality tended to be higher for those on the far right. The authors also found that individuals who supported political parties not included in the current government of their countries were more likely to exhibit conspiracy mentality compared to individuals whose parties were included in government. However, the U-shaped relationship was still intact when this variable was controlled for. This shows that although a perceived loss of control of a political party does influence conspiracy mentality, there are other more important factors at play to explain increased conspiracy mentality at both ends of the political spectrum.

What's the impact?

This is the largest study to investigate the relationship between political orientation and conspiracy mentality. This research is important as it provides nuance into the psychology behind conspiracy mentalities and provides a greater understanding of the connection with political affiliation.