The effects of communicating uncertainty on public trust in facts and numbers.

ABSTRACT: Uncertainty is inherent to our knowledge about the state of the world yet often not communicated alongside scientific facts and numbers. In the "posttruth" era where facts are increasingly contested, a common assumption is that communicating uncertainty will reduce public trust. However, a lack of systematic research makes it difficult to evaluate such claims. We conducted five experiments-including one preregistered replication with a national sample and one field experiment on the BBC News website (total n = 5,780)-to examine whether communicating epistemic uncertainty about facts across different topics (e.g., global warming, immigration), formats (verbal vs. numeric), and magnitudes (high vs. low) influences public trust. Results show that whereas people do perceive great

SUBMITTER: van der Bles AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7149229 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature