Ambiguous COVID-19 Messaging Increases Unsafe Socializing Intentions

Authors

  • Vincent Hopkins University of Saskatchewan
  • Mark Pickup Simon Fraser University
  • Scott Matthews Memorial University of Newfoundland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.61.299

Keywords:

COVID-19, Ambiguity, Motivated Reasoning, Communication

Abstract

Before and during the vaccine roll out, governments reported surging COVID-19 cases due to unsafe socializing among younger individuals. Officials continue to search for effective ways to encourage safe socializing behaviour within this demographic. However, a key challenge is that public health advice is necessarily nuanced and complex, which can create ambiguity. Appropriate behaviour depends on specific circumstances and public messaging cannot detail every situation. When people confront ambiguity in expert guidance, they may engage in motivated reasoning—that is, people’s underlying motivations may influence how they process information and make decisions. In a pre-registered experiment, we look at the effect of ambiguous public health messaging on people’s inferences regarding the behaviours the government expects them to avoid and intentions to engage in unsafe socializing. We find no evidence of an effect on inferences—that is, people who receive an ambiguous message about COVID-19 make inferences about correct behaviour that are similar to the inferences of those who receive no message. However, we find ambiguous messaging increases unsafe socializing intentions, especially among people aged 18-39 who socialized before the pandemic. Our findings underscore the need for unambiguous communications during public health crises.

Author Biographies

  • Mark Pickup, Simon Fraser University

    Mark Pickup is the Graduate Program Chair and Professor in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. He is a specialist in Political Behaviour, Political Psychology and Political Methodology. Substantively, his research primarily falls into three areas: political identities and political decision-making; conditions of democratic responsiveness and accountability; and polls and electoral outcomes. His research focuses on political information, public opinion, political identities, norms and election campaigns within North American and European countries. His methodological interests concern the analysis of longitudinal data (time series, panel, network, etc.) with secondary interests in Bayesian analysis and survey/lab experiment design.

  • Scott Matthews, Memorial University of Newfoundland

    Dr. Matthews is an Associate Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He specializes in the study of elections, voting and public opinion in Canada and the United States. He is broadly interested in the psychology of political learning and attitude change in multiple domains of political behaviour. While Matthews has written on diverse topics, at present, his on-going research is focused on: the role of uncertainty in support for costly public investments (or "policy tradeoffs"); economic inequality and electoral accountability;l and priming effects during election campaigns.

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Published

2023-01-30

Issue

Vol. 6 (2023)

Section

Research Articles

License

Creative Commons License

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The CC-BY license applies also to data, code and experimental material, except when it conflicts with a prior copyright.  Common courtesy requires informing authors of new uses of their data, as well as acknowledging the source.

How to Cite

Ambiguous COVID-19 Messaging Increases Unsafe Socializing Intentions. (2023). Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.61.299