The seduction of easiness: How science depictions influence laypeople’s reliance on their own evaluation of scientific information

Is it believable when it's scientific? How scientific discourse style influences laypeople's resolution of conflicts

“…Our findings for persuasiveness are consistent with the findings by Thomm and Bromme (2012) for single, uncontroversial texts. Hence, they add to the existing literature on the persuasiveness of scientific information by confirming that genre-typical discourse features belong to the group of factors that act as persuasive evidence (e.g., Rabinovich et al, 2012;Scharrer et al, 2012;Treise et al, 2003). Moreover, the present results extend Thomm and Bromme's (2012) findings by showing that readers also draw on genre-typical discourse features to resolve intertextual controversy.…”

“…A first pilot test of the text materials (40 participants) showed that both arguments in a conflict were regarded as equally plausible (all mean pairwise differences < 0.5 scale points). As perceived comprehensibility has been shown to influence laypeople's evaluation of science-based texts (Scharrer et al, 2012, a second pilot test (34 participants) confirmed that all texts in the same style did not significantly differ in terms of perceived comprehensibility and credibility (all Fs 1.905, ns).…”

“…Individuals who evaluate science‐based information have been shown to consider several different factors as persuasive evidence. These include characteristics of the text contents such as perceived information comprehensibility, argument type, and information controversiality (Scharrer, Britt, Stadtler, & Bromme, ; Scharrer, Bromme, Britt, & Stadtler, ), and features of the source such as source prestige, perceived motives of the source, and website domain (Rabinovich, Morton, & Birney, ; Treise, Walsh‐Childers, Weigold, & Friedman, ).…”

You'd Better Ask an Expert: Mitigating the Comprehensibility Effect on Laypeople's Decisions About Science‐Based Knowledge Claims

“…This comprehensibility effect has been confirmed when using moral arguments, product advertisements, or factual statements as text stimuli (e.g., Bradley & Meeds, ; Murphy, Long, Hollerana, & Esterly, ; Reber & Schwarz, ). Eagly () and Scharrer, Bromme, Britt, and Stadtler () as well as Scharrer, Britt, Stadtler, and Bromme () have extended these findings by demonstrating that the comprehensibility effect also applies to laypeople's evaluations of science‐based arguments. Reading science‐based texts that are easy to comprehend makes laypeople agree more with the knowledge claims they contain.…”

Is This Information Source Commercially Biased? How Contradictions Between Web Pages Stimulate the Consideration of Source Information

“…Kammerer & Gerjets, 2014;Strømsø, Bråten, & Britt, 2011) and the convincingness of the arguments provided by the pages (cf. argument strength, Scharrer, Bromme, Britt, & Stadtler, 2012) were assessed by single items on five-point scales from 1 ¼ not at all trustworthy / not at all convincing to 5 ¼ very trustworthy / very convincing for each of the two web pages.…”