Motivated Processing: How People Perceive News Covering Novel or Contradictory Health Research Findings

Abstract

This article examines responses to news stories that cover novel (vs. familiar) or contradictory (vs. one-sided) health research findings. Drawing on motivated reasoning and uncertainty management literature, this article proposes that novel and contradictory health research news stories arouse uncertainty and confusion and thus trigger motivated reasoning. People discount the credibility of the target news and express less willingness to adopt the advocated behaviors. In addition, people devalue health research by strengthening their beliefs that scientific research is uncertain, which lowers their attitudes toward health research. A large telephone survey of the general public and two experiments test these predictions.