April 7-9, 2022 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Communication Strategies to Promote Comprehensive Well-being
Communication Strategies to Promote Comprehensive Well-being
Abstract: Effects of Lexical and Discourse-based Hedging in News Stories about Cancer on Behavioral Beliefs and Trust Towards Scientists
Hedging, a strategy that journalists can use to convey scientific uncertainty, can manifest in two different ways: 1) lexical hedging, or the expression of uncertainty through linguistic elements such as “might,” “may,” and “likely,” and 2) discourse-based hedging, or the expression of uncertainty through disclosing experimental weaknesses, lack of generalizability of study results, and so forth. Empirical evidence suggests that including limitations in news stories about cancer research could favorably influence variables related to cancer control and prevention (Jensen, 2008; Jensen et al., 2011), but this prior research has solely focused on the effects of discourse-based hedging. Hence, the primary purpose of this study is to compare the effects of the two types of hedging in news stories about cancer on two important yet understudied outcomes related to cancer prevention and control—namely, cancer-related behavioral beliefs and trust towards cancer scientists. Also, to increase the generalizability of study findings, the effects of hedging were tested across two cancer topics, cancer clinical trials and colonoscopy, both of which are relevant to the general population given the high risk of developing invasive cancer during people’s lifetimes (American Cancer Society, 2020) and the importance of cancer screening in reducing cancer mortality rates (Byers, Wender, Jemal, Baskies, Ward, & Brawley, 2016). An online survey experiment was conducted. The experiment was a 2 (cancer topic: clinical trial, colonoscopy) x 3 (type of hedging: none, lexical, discourse-based) between-subjects design. Participants (N=576) recruited from MTurk were randomly assigned to one of the six conditions. Main outcomes included behavioral beliefs towards cancer clinical trial participation (e.g., “If I were to participate in a cancer clinical trial after a cancer diagnosis, it would provide me with better medical treatment”) or colonoscopy (e.g., “If I were to get screened for colorectal cancer (e.g., with a colonoscopy) when it is recommended for me, it would detect my cancer early”), as well as trust towards cancer scientists (e.g., “In my opinion, cancer researchers or scientists are intelligent”). Results showed no significant differences among the three hedging conditions in their effects on behavioral beliefs towards cancer clinical trials (F(2,285) = .48, p = .95) or colonoscopy (F(2,281) = .77 p = .93) and trust towards cancer scientists (F(2, 566) = .361, p = .70). These findings might be explained by a psychological distance and construal level perspective: Stimuli materials were filled with low-construal terms, as they addressed many concrete aspects of cancer clinical trials and colonoscopy, while cancer, as a topic, might be more psychologically distant from the generally young participants. Consequently, such incongruity might make the news stories less effective in influencing participants’ cognitions. Despite the null findings, the potential for hedging to communicate uncertainty in news stories should not be dismissed, particularly since the current study did not reveal any negative effects of hedging. Future work might compare the effects of different subtypes of lexical hedging, such as attribution shields (information on who said what, such as “at least to my understanding”) and plausibility shields (“probably,” “perhaps”).