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.

How Our Behavior Influences Productivity

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Post by Leanna Kalinowski and Leigh Christopher

What blocks your productivity?

Have you ever wanted to get something done, but found yourself endlessly putting it off? Or, in an attempt to start the day off on a productive note, been paralyzed by your long list of tasks to do? These experiences have one thing in common: they involve shifts in your attention or motivation. 

Feeling motivated can help us to stay productive, however, our motivation can wax and wane over time. And, sometimes, we simply don’t have the motivation needed to work at our best. We can also become easily distracted throughout the day, or develop bad habits that prevent us from achieving our goals. This is known as the intention-action gap - the concept that our intentions do not always translate into action. 

In an ideal world, we would avoid distractions, work efficiently and accomplish everything we planned. However, as human beings, we’re susceptible to distractions and we have limited willpower. Fortunately, there are helpful strategies that we can use to aid in the development of better productivity habits. BrainPost partnered with Intelligent Change (creators of The Five Minute Journal) to highlight some of the top, scientifically-backed strategies that you can implement to stay on track.

Creating a simple plan to reduce the noise

Why is it so hard to accomplish what we want? Although it may seem like we know exactly what needs to be done, this can often be the first barrier to productivity - noise. There is so much going on in our day-to-day lives that our goals can seem overwhelming. This is why implementation intentions - a simple plan that states where, when, or what we will do- can be immensely helpful. One research study found that those who wrote down where and when they were going to exercise were more than twice as likely to follow through on their exercise plan. This research highlights that it’s not always about boosting inherent motivation. A simple cue in our environment, in this case, like the indication of where or when the action will take place, helps lead to the desired behavior, which then, in turn, encourages even greater motivation later on. 

What else can help us filter through the noise? Another important, but often overlooked concept in productivity, is prioritization. By whittling down our to-do list to just a few or even one very important task, we simplify our lives and lighten our cognitive load. Choosing one task to focus on at a time can also reduce choice overload - when too many choices make it difficult to decide what to do, hindering action. Sometimes, one of the biggest challenges is identifying what is actually most important - and this can be especially uncomfortable when the most important thing is something we’ve been avoiding. This is why prioritizing the most important task to focus on for the day can be a powerful way to follow through on our goals. 

Using sub-goals and progress monitoring to boost motivation

There are pros and cons to setting a significant goal, such as writing a graduate school thesis or training for a marathon. On one hand, difficult goals that require considerable effort lead to higher performance and motivation, because people feel a greater sense of accomplishment after completing something challenging. On the other hand, goals that are too challenging or that exceed the limits of one’s capabilities are more likely to be abandoned midway through. Chunking goals into smaller steps (i.e., setting “sub-goals”) can help make those larger goals more attainable while still retaining the overarching challenge and reward. For example, setting a goal to spend an hour a day working on your thesis can help to provide daily bursts of reward, keeping the sense of accomplishment and motivation going while working towards the larger goal of completion. 

Whether you are setting sub-goals or powering through your larger goal, research shows that monitoring your progress can help improve your likelihood of success. There are several ways to ensure that progress monitoring is most effective. First, be sure to monitor the progress that is specific to the goal that you are trying to achieve: for example, if your goal is to finish a writing piece, focus your goal on metrics directly related to this (e.g., minutes spent writing) rather than metrics that are indirectly related or vague. Second, monitor your progress in a quantifiable way. While simply checking a box saying “I wrote today” can be motivating for some, it can be more helpful for others to assign numerical values to their progress, like the number of paragraphs written for example. Finally, be sure to physically record your progress, as this also helps to increase your chances of following through on your goal. Tracking your progress in a planner or journal, for example, is one great way to visualize how you’re moving forward.

The Productivity Planner, by Intelligent Change, leverages implementation intentions, prioritization, and time tracking.

Turning a behavior into a habit

Ultimately, productivity strategies can vary from person to person. The strategies offered here can be thought of as tools to help you stay on track when pursuing your goals, and some may stick better than others. Having a system in place to help with productivity can be powerful in developing good habits. This is because repeating certain behaviors can help to reinforce a habit by increasing motivation to perform the same action again, eventually leading to a more automatic (i.e. easier) experience. This process is known as a habit formation loop - a cycle whereby repeated behaviors become more naturally rewarding and easier to perform. Although staying productive is important in the accomplishment of our goals, we are only human, and not every day will be productive. This is why introducing some flexibility into goal-setting, and practicing acceptance when things don’t go as planned, can be just as important.