The effects of experimentally induced emotions on revising common vaccine misconceptions

"Let's get back to normal": emotions mediate the effects of persuasive messages on willingness to vaccinate for COVID-19

Objective

We examined the effectiveness of three different messages for persuading individuals to get vaccinated against COVID-19, and the role that emotions play in persuasion.

Methods

Four hundred-thirty-six participants reported their concern about the COVID-19 pandemic and confidence/hesitancy toward vaccines. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three text conditions: (1) self-interest: a persuasive message that focused on how much of a "serious threat COVID-19 is to you," and to get vaccinated to "protect yourself"; (2) self-interest + altruistic: a persuasive message that focused on the "threat to you and your community" and to get vaccinated to "protect you and your loved ones"; (3) self-interest + altruistic + normal: a persuasive message that included (2) but added "This is the only way we can get back to a normal life."; and, (4) a baseline control: no text. After reading, participants reported their emotions toward COVID-19 vaccines and their willingness to get vaccinated.

Results

Individuals in the self-interest + altruistic + normal condition were more willing to get vaccinated compared to the control condition and self-interest + altruistic condition. However, there were no differences in willingness between the self-interest + altruistic + normal condition and the self-interest condition. Moreover, emotions mediated relations between vaccine confidence/hesitancy and willingness.

Conclusion

A message that focuses on "getting back to normal" can achieve important public health action by increasing vaccine uptake to protect the population. Future work is needed across multiple countries and contexts (i.e., non-pandemic) to assess message effectiveness.

The nature of misinformation in education

In this opinion piece, we review and characterize the nature of misinformation in education and discuss the implications for corrective efforts. In education, misinformation manifests at three different levels: the individual, the community, and the system. At the individual level, misinformation manifests as naive beliefs or misconceptions students hold before they receive instruction or because of instruction. At the community level, misinformation manifests as shared flawed views or misconceptions about certain topics often around risk factors and treatments of learning disabilities. At the system level, misinformation manifests as state or district educational policies and practices that have no scientific evidence. Thus, corrective efforts in education must be implemented at all three levels and follow best practices.

Sadness facilitates "deeper" reading comprehension: a behavioural and eye tracking study

Reading is one of the most common everyday activities, yet research elucidating how affective influence reading processes and outcomes is sparse with inconsistent results. To investigate this question, we randomly assigned participants (N = 136) to happiness (positive affect), sadness (negative affect), and neutral video-induction conditions prior to engaging in self-paced reading of a long, complex science text. Participants completed assessments targeting multiple levels of comprehension (e.g. recognising factual information, integrating different textual components, and open-ended responses of concepts from memory) after reading and after a week-long delay. Results indicated that the Sadness (vs. Happiness) condition had higher comprehension scores, with the largest effects emerging for assessments targeting deeper levels comprehension immediately after reading. Eye-tracking analyses revealed that such benefits may be partly driven by sustained attentional focus over the 20-minute reading session. We discuss results with respect to theories on affect, cognition, and text comprehension.

Emotionally congruent music and text increase immersion and appraisal

Numerous studies indicate that listening to music and reading are processes that interact in multiple ways. However, these interactions have rarely been explored with regard to the role of emotional mood. In this study, we first conducted two pilot experiments to assess the conveyed emotional mood of four classical music pieces and that of four narrative text excerpts. In the main experiment, participants were asked to read the texts while listening to the music and to rate their emotional state in terms of valence, arousal, and dominance. Subsequently, they rated text and music of the multisensory event in terms of the perceived mood, liking, immersion, and music-text fit. We found a mutual carry-over effect of happy and sad moods from music to text and vice versa. Against our expectations, this effect was not mediated by the valence, arousal, or dominance experienced by the subject. Moreover, we revealed a significant interaction between music mood and text mood. Texts were liked better, they were classified as of better quality, and participants felt more immersed in the text if text mood and music mood corresponded. The role of mood congruence when listening to music while reading should not be ignored and deserves further exploration.

Flattening the COVID-19 curve: Emotions mediate the effects of a persuasive message on preventive action

Introduction

Across four countries (Canada, USA, UK, and Italy), we explored the effects of persuasive messages on intended and actual preventive actions related to COVID-19, and the role of emotions as a potential mechanism for explaining these effects.

Methods

One thousand seventy-eight participants first reported their level of concern and emotions about COVID-19 and then received a positive persuasive text, negative persuasive text, or no text. After reading, participants reported their emotions about the pandemic and their willingness to take preventive action. One week following, the same participants reported the frequency with which they engaged in preventive action and behaviors that increased the risk of contracting COVID-19.

Results

Results revealed that the positive persuasive text significantly increased individuals' willingness to and actual engagement in preventive action and reduced risky behaviors 1 week following the intervention compared to the control condition. Moreover, significant differences were found between the positive persuasive text condition and negative persuasive text condition whereby individuals who read the positive text were more willing and actually engaged in more preventive action compared to those who read the negative text. No differences were found, however, at the 1-week follow-up for social distancing and isolation behaviors. Results also revealed that specific discrete emotions mediated relations between the effects of the texts and preventive action (both willing and actual).

Discussion

This research highlights the power of educational interventions to prompt behavioral change and has implications for pandemic-related interventions, government policy on health promotion messages, and future research.

The ‘Fauci Effect’: Reducing COVID-19 Misconceptions and Vaccine Hesitancy Using an Authentic Multimodal Intervention

Social media environments enable users to proliferate misinformation surrounding COVID-19. Expert sources, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci have leveraged social media to present corrective multimedia messages. However, little is known about the efficacy of these messages in revising common misconceptions about COVID-19 and influencing behavior. In this study, we examined the efficacy of a multimodal intervention using authentic social media messages that directly addressed common COVID-19 misconceptions. Going further, we identified individual differences that influenced the effectiveness of the intervention, as well as whether those factors predicted individuals’ willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The results showed that the intervention was successful in increasing knowledge when compared to a baseline control. Those who were older and reported less vaccine hesitancy showed greater learning from the intervention. Factors that significantly predicted intention to vaccinate included receiving the intervention, vaccine confidence, vaccine hesitancy, prior flu vaccination history, age, and fear of COVID-19. These findings indicate that multimodal messages can be effectively leveraged in social media to both fight misinformation and increase intention to be vaccinated - however, these interventions may not be as effective for all individuals.

Covid-19 Vaccine Fact-checking Posts on Facebook: An Observational Study

BACKGROUND

Effective interventions aimed at correcting COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, known as fact-checking messages, are needed to combat the mounting anti-vaccine infodemic and alleviate vaccine hesitancy.

OBJECTIVE

This works investigates (a) the changes of the public's attitude toward COVID-19 vaccines over time, (b) the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine fact-checking information on social media engagement and attitude change, and (c) the emotion and linguistic features of COVID-19 vaccine fact-checking information ecosystem.

METHODS

We collected a dataset of 12,553 COVID-19 vaccine fact-checking Facebook posts and their associated comments (N=122,362) from January 2020 - March 2022 and conducted a series of natural language processing and statistical analyses to investigate trends in public attitude toward the vaccine in COVID-19 vaccine fact-checking posts and comments, and emotional and linguistic features of the COVID-19 fact-checking information ecosystem.

RESULTS

The percentage of fact-checking posts relative to all COVID-19 vaccine posts peaked in May of 2020 and then steadily decreased as the pandemic progressed (r = -.92, df = 21, t = -10.94, 95% CI = [-.97, -.82], P < .001). The salience of COVID-19 vaccine entities was significantly lower in comments (M = 0.03, t = 39.28, P < .001) than in posts (M = 0.09). Third-party fact checkers have been taking a more important role with more fact-checking over time (r = .63, df = 25, t = 4.06, 95% CI = [.33, .82], P < .001). COVID-19 vaccine fact-checking posts continued to be more analytical (r = .81, df = 25, t = 6.88, 95% CI = [.62, .91], P < .001) and more confident (r = .59, df = 25, t = 3.68, 95% CI = [.27, .79], P = .001) over time. While comments did not exhibit a significant increase in confidence over time, tentativeness in comments decreased significantly (r = -.62, df = 25, t = -3.94, 95% CI = [-.81, -.31], P = .001). While hospitals receive less engagement than other information sources, the comments expressed more positive attitudinal valence in comments compared to other information sources (b = 0.06, 95% CI = [0.00, 0.12], t = 2.03, P = .043).

CONCLUSIONS

The percentage of fact-checking posts relative to all posts about the vaccine steadily decreased after May of 2020. As the pandemic progressed, third-party fact checkers played a larger role in posting fact-checking COVID-19 vaccine posts. COVID-19 vaccine fact-checking posts continued to be more analytical and more confident over time, reflecting increased confidence in posts. Similarly, tentativeness in comments decreased; this likewise suggests that public uncertainty diminished over time. COVID-19 fact-checking vaccine posts from hospitals yielded more positive attitudes toward vaccination than other information sources. At the same time, hospitals received less engagement than other information sources. This suggests that hospitals should invest more in generating engaging public health campaigns on social media.

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