Disgusting microbes: The effect of disgust on perceptions of risks related to modifying microbiomes

Examination of public perceptions of microbes and microbiomes in the United States reveals insights for science communication

Within a changing research and media landscape, misconceptions and misinformation about microorganisms and microbiomes can arise, necessitating improvements in science communication practices through insights in public perceptions of the microbial world. Yet, little is known about public perceptions of microorganisms and microbiomes, making it difficult to develop tailored messaging. Here we perform an inductive thematic analysis with interviews and surveys from thirty adults across the United States to identify key factors to enhance microbial science communication efforts. Together, our results underscore the importance of 1) recognizing the existing and desired future knowledge of an audience, 2) aligning with broader socio-scientific issues that resonate with people in relevant channels using social networks, 3) fostering collaboration between microbiologists, social scientists, and communicators to improve messaging, and 4) appealing to people's values and emotions to establish meaningful connections. This study concludes that non-microbial interests, such as an interest in health and wellness, may lead to acquisition of microbial knowledge and that people want scientists to share microbial messages preferably on platforms like social media. Additionally, we identified confusion about microbial terms and a desire to understand human-centric benefits of microorganisms and microbiomes. We suggest that microbiologists partner with science communicators to develop microbial messaging, capitalizing on connections to non-microbial interests and appealing to people's microbial worldview.

Risk Researchers' Views About the Goal of Trying to Ensure Policymakers Consider Scientific Evidence

A survey of members of a scientific society focused on risk analysis suggests substantial support for seeing their scientific society pursue the communication goal of "trying to ensure that policymakers consider scientific evidence." Support for pursuing this goal was largely predicted by researchers' beliefs that it was ethical for the society to pursue the goal, that it would be satisfying to see their society pursue the goal, and the belief that the society could have a positive impact on society by pursuing the goal. Normative beliefs about pursuing the goal and organizational efficacy beliefs were not good predictors of goal support. Goal support was measured using a direct measure of perceived goal importance as well as measures focused on the degree to which respondents wanted their society to put resources into providing members with opportunities to pursue the goal and the amount of funding that members thought the society should devote to pursuing the goal. The theory underlying the work argues that we can treat science communicators' choices about communication goals, objectives, and tactics as "planned behaviors" and thus study them using traditional behavior change models.

A natural history museum visitor survey of perception, attitude and knowledge (PAK) of microbes and antibiotics

A kiosk-based survey at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 2016-2018 allowed us to assess public knowledge of antibiotics and public attitudes toward microbes in museum goers. Over 22,000 visitors from 172 countries and territories answered several carefully designed questions about microbes and antibiotics. These visitors also entered age, gender, and country demographic data that allowed for stratification along these demographic and geographic divisions. Because museum goers are likely to be better informed about these and other science-based topics, the results described here can set a potential upper bound for public knowledge on these topics. Surprisingly, the results of our analysis of museum goers' answers about microbes and antibiotics indicate a substantial lack of familiarity with both topics. For example, overall only about 50% of respondents can correctly identify penicillin as an antibiotic and less than 50% of museum visitors view microbes as beneficial. The results described here suggest that we are perhaps off target with our educational efforts in this area and that a major shift in approach toward more basic microbial topics is warranted in our educational efforts.

Emotion and humor as misinformation antidotes

Many visible public debates over scientific issues are clouded in accusations of falsehood, which place increasing demands on citizens to distinguish fact from fiction. Yet, constraints on our ability to detect misinformation coupled with our inadvertent motivations to believe false science result in a high likelihood that we will form misperceptions. As science falsehoods are often presented with emotional appeals, we focus our perspective on the roles of emotion and humor in the formation of science attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Recent research sheds light on how funny science and emotions can help explain and potentially overcome our inability or lack of motivation to recognize and challenge misinformation. We identify some lessons learned from these related and growing areas of research and conclude with a brief discussion of the ethical considerations of using persuasive strategies, calling for more dialogue among members of the science communication community.

Emotion and judgments of scientific research

Scientific research has the power to prompt strong emotional reactions. We investigated the relationship between such reactions and individuals' understanding and judgments of the research. Participants read an article describing recent cancer research and reported the extent to which it evoked six emotions: fear, anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, and surprise. We modeled these emotions two ways, either considering each separately or clustering them into two groups, for emotions with positive or negative valence. Even after controlling for the number of predictors, models based on the six separate emotions better predicted participants' subjective understanding of the research, judgments of its quality, and trust in the scientists who conducted it. Participants who reported more disgust also had more negative judgments of the research and the scientists, but these relationships were weaker when participants reported their emotions before making these judgments, rather than after. We discuss practical and ethical implications of these results.