My research program includes two main areas, both of which fall under the larger umbrella of unintended communication effects.
(1) Communicating Scientific Uncertainty
- “Impact of different types of uncertainty on public willingness to participate in precision medicine research” (forthcoming in Annals of Behavioral Medicine and I’ve shared the preprint here)
- Study in progress: communicating scientific uncertainty in the media — a mixed-methods investigation (update: We’ll be presenting this at virtual AEJMC 2021 — stay tuned!)
- “Public Understanding of Precision Medicine Research: A Qualitative Analysis of Lay Perceptions” presented at the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare in San Diego, October 2019
- Scientific uncertainty chapter published in Routledge volume
- Presented at Huntsman Cancer Institute: gaps in genomic communication research
- Summer 2017 fellow at the National Cancer Institute
(2) Mitigating Reactance in Health Contexts
Psychological reactance occurs when individuals feel their autonomy is being threatened, such as by invasive or overtly persuasive communication approaches. My recent projects include:
Reactance to Persuasive Health Appeals
- Reactance to COVID-19 messaging (presented virtually at ICA 2021)
- Meta-analysis of narratives and resistance (published in Human Communication Research Feb 2020)
- Review of conceptual and operational approaches to studying reactance (new article in Communication Research August 2019)
- Studying the effects of framing and dose on reactance (new article in Risk Analysis July 2019)
- Presented at ICA 2018: meta-analysis of studies of narrative effects on resistance
- Presented at DCHC 2017: loss/gain framing and reactance (we nabbed “top paper”!)
- Meta-analysis of narratives and resistance (part 1) wins Eason prize in Chicago
Reactance to Highly Tailored Health Information
Planned research will look at whether reactance can arise from hypertailored health communication (e.g., in precision medicine). Related projects include: