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Immediate and Persisting Effects of Controversial Media Information on Young People’s Judgement of Health Issues

Whether true or false, media information shapes people’s thinking. False information trigger beliefs which could compromise health behaviour. In this intervention study, the effect of controversial messages on 91 young participants’ judgement of health issues was tested. Held opinions about health-r...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Szabo, Attila
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PsychOpen 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913016/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33680181
http://dx.doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v16i2.1929
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author Szabo, Attila
author_facet Szabo, Attila
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description Whether true or false, media information shapes people’s thinking. False information trigger beliefs which could compromise health behaviour. In this intervention study, the effect of controversial messages on 91 young participants’ judgement of health issues was tested. Held opinions about health-related issues were assessed before, after and one week after viewing a controversial TV-interview. Using pre-interview opinions for baseline, changes in judgements were assessed immediately after and one week after the interview. At both times, the opinions differed statistically significantly from baseline (p < .001). The relationship between opinions immediately- and one week-after viewing the interview was statistically significantly stronger (p < .001) than their association with the baseline. The results provide evidence for immediate change in judgment resulting from controversial information and demonstrate that the change persists for at least one week. The findings can be explained based on the schema theory and suggest that controversial information could have powerful impact on subjective judgement. Consequently, young people need to be educated in health issues and in the evaluation of media information to enable them to make the right choice when the need arises.
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spelling pubmed-79130162021-03-04 Immediate and Persisting Effects of Controversial Media Information on Young People’s Judgement of Health Issues Szabo, Attila Eur J Psychol Research Reports Whether true or false, media information shapes people’s thinking. False information trigger beliefs which could compromise health behaviour. In this intervention study, the effect of controversial messages on 91 young participants’ judgement of health issues was tested. Held opinions about health-related issues were assessed before, after and one week after viewing a controversial TV-interview. Using pre-interview opinions for baseline, changes in judgements were assessed immediately after and one week after the interview. At both times, the opinions differed statistically significantly from baseline (p < .001). The relationship between opinions immediately- and one week-after viewing the interview was statistically significantly stronger (p < .001) than their association with the baseline. The results provide evidence for immediate change in judgment resulting from controversial information and demonstrate that the change persists for at least one week. The findings can be explained based on the schema theory and suggest that controversial information could have powerful impact on subjective judgement. Consequently, young people need to be educated in health issues and in the evaluation of media information to enable them to make the right choice when the need arises. PsychOpen 2020-05-29 /pmc/articles/PMC7913016/ /pubmed/33680181 http://dx.doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v16i2.1929 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Reports
Szabo, Attila
Immediate and Persisting Effects of Controversial Media Information on Young People’s Judgement of Health Issues
title Immediate and Persisting Effects of Controversial Media Information on Young People’s Judgement of Health Issues
title_full Immediate and Persisting Effects of Controversial Media Information on Young People’s Judgement of Health Issues
title_fullStr Immediate and Persisting Effects of Controversial Media Information on Young People’s Judgement of Health Issues
title_full_unstemmed Immediate and Persisting Effects of Controversial Media Information on Young People’s Judgement of Health Issues
title_short Immediate and Persisting Effects of Controversial Media Information on Young People’s Judgement of Health Issues
title_sort immediate and persisting effects of controversial media information on young people’s judgement of health issues
topic Research Reports
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913016/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33680181
http://dx.doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v16i2.1929
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