Laura Kranz, School of Psychology PhD candidate, will speak on:

The role of cognition and emotion in science communication

Abstract:

Science communicators emphasise the importance of using emotion to effectively communicate scientific knowledge. However, the use of emotion seems to be driven by practitioners’ intuitions about its effectiveness, rather than evidence based inquiry about how emotion influences belief-change, decision-making and behaviour. We know from psychological research that different emotions can have different effects on different cognitive processes.

To that end, the goal of my thesis is to understand how emotion is used in science communication and the influence different emotions have on belief-change. I will catalogue how emotion is used in science communication both by directly asking practitioners, as well as using other qualitative methods (e.g., observational approaches). This information will inform lab-based experiments designed to investigate how emotion influences belief-change about scientific knowledge. Combined, these studies will add to a growing body of literature, and provide an important cognitive-affective perspective on the use of emotion in science communication.