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Contains fulltext : 252741.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) In this study, we examined whether adolescents helped others during the COVID-19 pandemic and how stories in the media inspired them in doing so. Using an online daily diary design, 481 younger adolescents (M = 15.29, SD = 1.76) and 404 older adolescents (M = 21.48, SD = 1.91) were followed for 2 weeks. Findings from linear mixed effects models demonstrated that feelings of being moved by stories in the media were related to giving emotional support to family and friends, and to helping others, including strangers. Exposure to COVID-19 news and information was found to spark efforts to support and help as well and keeping physical distance in line with the advised protective behaviors against COVID-19. Moreover, helping others was related to increased happiness. Overall, the findings of this study highlight the potential role of the media in connecting people in times of crisis. 26 p.

Contains fulltext : 284215.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Children's vulnerability to advertising has been the subject of social and political debate for many years. In comparison with adults, children (up to 12 years old) are thought to be more vulnerable when confronted with advertising and, consequently, more sensitive to its impact. The rationale behind this common assumption is that advertising literacy has not fully developed in children, and that they are therefore less capable of recognizing the temptations of advertising and evaluate it in a critical manner. In this article, we discuss how the topic of children as vulnerable consumers has been addressed in advertising research over the past four decades (since the 1980s), particularly in the International Journal of Advertising (IJA). Specifically, we discuss the state of research on the unintended effects of advertising and children's advertising literacy and defences. Finally, we propose a research agenda including upcoming trends that need to be addressed in future research on children's vulnerability to advertising. 9 p.

Item does not contain fulltext A.S. Walter Political incivility in the parliamentary, electoral and media arena: Crossing boundaries Abingdon:Routledge ,2021 9780367462734

Item does not contain fulltext Direct persuasion (i.e., providing people with arguments in favor of a certain behavior) can activate resistance in the receiver and, thus, result in a hampered influence attempt. More promising techniques to influence people’s behavior are self-persuasion (SP; i.e., asking people to generate arguments themselves) and the question–behavior effect (QBE; i.e., asking people to predict their future behavior), which can be easily implemented in social media settings. As both rely differently on message elaboration and focus on different outcomes, we investigated whether SP or QBE is more effective in a social media setting to increase helping behavior. In a between-subjects design, participants viewed an online Facebook group related to United World Schools and either (a) read arguments regarding helping others (direct persuasion), (b) provided arguments regarding helping others (SP), or (c) stated whether they intended to help others (QBE), while their message elaboration was assessed. We hypothesized that both SP and QBE would positively impact attitudes and levels of helping behavior compared to the direct persuasion condition. Additionally, we hypothesized that QBE and SP are equally effective in changing behavior, but that SP is more effective than QBE in changing attitudes toward helping, especially when participants strongly elaborate on their own arguments regarding the positive aspects of helping. Results showed no evidence of SP and QBE influencing attitudes toward helping and helping behavior. For behavioral intentions, some, albeit limited, evidence was found that SP and QBE can have an effect. 11 p.

Contains fulltext : 285257.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Ondanks overweldigend wetenschappelijk bewijs zijn we het niet allemaal eens over de feiten met betrekking tot een aantal belangrijke onderwerpen. Hoe kan dat? Dit artikel geeft een overzicht van onderzoek naar hoe mensen vasthouden aan onjuiste overtuigingen terwijl ze geconfronteerd worden met juiste informatie en hoe wetenschapscommunicatie verbeterd kan worden om mensen te helpen tot wetenschappelijk accurate overtuigingen te komen. English abstract: The public does not agree about the facts surrounding a number of formi-dable challenges that the world is facing. Science communication plays an important role in informing people about the facts related to such important societal topics, but it is not always effective. The aim of the work discussed in this paper is to investigate how people stick to false beliefs in the face of corrective information and how science communication can improve to help people come to scientifically accurate beliefs. The research reviewed here demonstrates that people can sometimes stick to misperceptions when faced with corrective information because they are motivated to do so. Second, the findings show both meta-analytically and experimentally that science communication can improve by leveraging the informational and heuristic value of scientific consensus. Although many questions remain, helping people identify and understand scientific consensus can help reduce misperceptions even further than only communicating the consensus itself. 24 p.

Item does not contain fulltext Resistance toward persuasion has received more and more attention in the past decades to explain the ineffectiveness of (threatening) health messages. In the literature, several motivations for resistance and strategies to resist health messages (i.e., defensive responses) have been identified and studied. Moreover, research on persuasive strategies like self-affirmation, entertainment-education, and empathy arousal have found positive results on decreasing or overcoming resistance. New lines of research on these topics should focus on the relationships between resistance motivations, resistance strategies, and resistance-overcoming persuasion strategies.

Background Little is known about how conspiracy beliefs and health responses are interrelated over time during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. This longitudinal study tested two contrasting, but not mutually exclusive, hypotheses through cross-lagged modeling. First, based on the consequential nature of conspiracy beliefs, we hypothesize that conspiracy beliefs predict an increase in detrimental health responses over time. Second, as people may rationalize their behavior through conspiracy beliefs, we hypothesize that detrimental health responses predict increased conspiracy beliefs over time. Methods We measured conspiracy beliefs and several health-related responses (i.e. physical distancing, support for lockdown policy, and the perception of the coronavirus as dangerous) at three phases of the pandemic in the Netherlands (N = 4913): During the first lockdown (Wave 1: April 2020), after the first lockdown (Wave 2: June 2020), and during the second lockdown (Wave 3: December 2020). Results For physical distancing and perceived danger, the overall cross-lagged effects supported both hypotheses, although the standardized effects were larger for the effects of conspiracy beliefs on these health responses than vice versa. The within-person change results only supported an effect of conspiracy beliefs on these health responses, depending on the phase of the pandemic. Furthermore, an overall cross-lagged effect of conspiracy beliefs on reduced support for lockdown policy emerged from Wave 2 to 3. Conclusions The results provide stronger support for the hypothesis that conspiracy beliefs predict health responses over time than for the hypothesis that health responses predict conspiracy beliefs over time.

Early adolescents frequently use mobile messaging apps to communicate with peers. The popularity of such messaging apps has a critical drawback because it increases conformity to cyber aggression. Cyber aggression includes aggressive peer behaviors such as nasty comments, nonconsensual image sharing, and social exclusion, to which adolescents subsequently conform. Recent empirical research points to peer group norms and reduced accountability as two essential determinants of conformity to cyber aggression. Therefore, the current study aimed to counteract these two determinants in a 2 (peer group norms counteracted: yes, no) x 2 (reduced accountability counteracted: yes, no) design. We created four intervention conditions that addressed adolescents’ deficits in information, motivation, and behavioral skills. Depending on the condition (peer group norms, reduced accountability, combination, or control), we first informed participants about the influence of the relevant determinant (e.g., peer group norms). Subsequently, participants performed a self-persuasion task and formulated implementation-intentions to increase their motivation and behavioral skills not to conform to cyber aggression. Effectiveness was tested with a messaging app paradigm and self-report among a sample of 377 adolescents (Mage = 12.99, SDage = 0.84; 53.6% boys). Factorial ANCOVAs revealed that none of the intervention conditions reduced conformity to cyber aggression. Moreover, individual differences in susceptibility to peer pressure or inhibitory control among adolescents did not moderate the expected relations. Therefore, there is no evidence that our intervention effectively reduces conformity to cyber aggression. The findings from this first intervention effort point to the complex relationship between theory and practice. Our findings warrant future research to develop potential intervention tools that could effectively reduce conformity to cyber aggression.

Contains fulltext : 283731.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Covid-19-related fake news widely circulates on social media. This is problematic as people commonly do not process information on social media in a very critical manner. Also, when people encounter particular online content several times this tends to increase the content's trustworthiness, sometimes irrespective of the accuracy of the provided information. Our study aims to explore whether, how, and for whom a simple critical thinking recommendation added to a social media newsfeed can aid people to better discern true news from fake news and reduce their trust in fake news. In an online experiment, 220 participants were exposed to a Twitter newsfeed with true and fake Covid-19-related news messages, either with or without critical thinking recommendations. The findings showed that participants who were exposed to the recommendations showed less trust in fake news messages, which was mediated by an increased accuracy in news truth discernment. Results showed no significant moderating effects of information literacy and impulsivity characteristics. Overall, the findings of this study are promising as this scalable, low-cost intervention might potentially help combat the effects of fake news on social media. 24 p.

Contains fulltext : 242397.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) This article is part of a project that explores the potential of chatbots for providing online emotional support to humans tailored to stressors. Based on a number of empirical studies, we have developed a socially interactive agent able to have simple dialogues with stressed humans seeking for emotional support. In the current article, we address the question to what extent this chatbot is effective in helping users cope with stressful situations. To this end, we present a study in which participants were asked to interact with our proposed chatbot for three days. Participants are distributed over the following three conditions - namely: 1) receiving support from the chatbot, knowing the support is computer-generated; 2) receiving support from the chatbot, while believing the support is human-generated; 3) not receiving any support. During the three days, participants' self-reported stress levels are measured on a daily basis before and after each interaction. Results indicate that the best results are obtained in the 'human' condition, while the worst results are obtained in the "computer" condition. These findings lead us to conclude that the presumed sender of a stress support message (i.e., a human or a computer) might be more important than the content of the message. 11 p.

Contains fulltext : 221354.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Although self-persuasion was shown to be more effective than direct persuasion in changing attitudes and intentions, its effectiveness in different cultures remains unclear. Furthermore, research suggests that Eastern individuals tend to incorporate close others in the self to a larger extent than Western individuals. Combining both lines of research, the current studies examined whether thinking of a close other would influence the effectiveness of (self)-persuasion across cultures. Two parallel studies were conducted. U.S. participants (n study 1 = 195; n study 2 = 292) and Chinese participants (n study 1 = 187; n study 2 = 313) reported their initial attitudes and intentions toward five target behaviors prior to either think of a specific close other or not. Subsequently, they were randomly assigned to receive either a self-persuasion or a direct persuasion task. Specifically, the self-persuasion task led participants to generate own arguments or arguments that they think the close other would give; the direct persuasion task led participants to read given arguments or imagine that the arguments were from the close other. In the end, all participants reported their attitudes and intentions again after doing the persuasion tasks. The moderation effect of culture was only found in Study 1, such that direct persuasion worked more effectively in Chinese participants than self-persuasion, whereas the effectiveness of the two persuasive techniques did not differ in U.S. participants. In both studies, thinking of a close other was not found to influence the effectiveness of (self-)persuasion across cultures. Possible explanations and future research directions were discussed. 30 p.

Contains fulltext : 285242.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Vaccine hesitancy (VH) is considered a top-10 global health threat. The concept of VH has been described and applied inconsistently. This systematic review aims to clarify VH by analysing how it is operationalized. We searched PubMed, Embase and PsycINFO databases on 14 January 2022. We selected 422 studies containing operationalizations of VH for inclusion. One limitation is that studies of lower quality were not excluded. Our qualitative analysis reveals that VH is conceptualized as involving (1) cognitions or affect, (2) behaviour and (3) decision making. A wide variety of methods have been used to measure VH. Our findings indicate the varied and confusing use of the term VH, leading to an impracticable concept. We propose that VH should be defined as a state of indecisiveness regarding a vaccination decision. 15 p.

Children display fright and worry responses to violent news. Including involved children, non-involved children or experts as sources in children’s news is assumed to reduce these negative effects. However, exemplification theory gives reason to question whether particularly the use of involved children indeed has a reassuring effect. To test this, an experiment was conducted among 237 children (8–13 y/o). They were randomly exposed to a news video containing (1) involved children as source, (2) non-involved children, or (3) adult experts. Fright and worry responses were measured both before and after exposure. Results showed that the inclusion of involved children as a source significantly increased worry responses, but did not affect fright responses. Non-involved child sources significantly reduced fright and worry responses. Expert sources reduced children’s fright responses, but did not change feelings of worry. These insights can inform news producers on how to alleviate the effects of covering violent events in news. IMPACT SUMMARY (a) Prior State of Knowledge Violent content in news induces negative responses in children. Producers of children’s news try to alleviate these effects by using involved children, non-involved children, or adult experts as sources in violent news stories. (b) Novel Contributions This study provides first empirical insights into the effects of involved children, non-involved children, and adult experts as sources in violent news stories on children’s fear and worry responses. It shows how to alleviate children’s negative emotional responses to news. (c) Practical Implications News producers are encouraged to use non-involved children or adult experts when presenting violent news to children. They should be careful with the inclusion of involved children as sources in news stories.

Item does not contain fulltext Interactivity has become a crucial aspect of marketing. It allows companies to connect with their customers, often resulting in positive outcomes. Based on a literature review, this chapter discusses ten of the most pioneering tools used in interactive marketing. First it will be explained how each tool relates to the three dimensions of interactivity (active control, two-way communication, synchronicity), and insights in what dimensions are the driving forces behind each interactive marketing tool are provided. Second, results showing that research on the ten interactive marketing tools generally finds positive effects on diverse outcome variables, such as enjoyment, urges, and behavioral intentions, are discussed together with conflicting outcomes (e.g., the effect on cognition) and the potential negative effects of the tools (e.g., privacy concerns and intrusiveness). It concludes with the recommendation for marketers and researchers to collaborate and actively try out (innovative) interactive marketing tools while closely monitoring their effects.

Item does not contain fulltext 3 p.

Contains fulltext : 251007.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Robots are becoming an integral part of society, and might soon take on roles involving making morally relevant decisions. In a pre-registered experiment (n = 184), we investigated which factors modulate the extent to which we trust a robot to make a moral choice. Specifically, the effects of anthropomorphic appearance and anthropomorphic agency and affect attributions were assessed. Participants were presented with moral dilemmas in which the individual having to make a decision was a humanoid or mechanical robot. Each robot was described in vignettes in which they were attributed with agency and/or affective states. Subsequently, participants? implicit moral trust in the robot was measured, as well as explicit trust, perceived capability of the robot, and the extent to which they felt the robot was responsible for its choice. Both agency and affective state attributions were found to impact participants? implicit and explicit trust as well as the perceived capability of the robot. Moreover, across conditions, mechanical robots were trusted significantly more than humanoid robots to take moral choices. 17 p.

Contains fulltext : 288700.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Substituting the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) with that of water can have a positive effect on adolescents' health. However, despite the attention on this topic in the Global North, it is relatively understudied in other regions of the world, such as the Caribbean. To guide the development of future interventions, understanding the factors determining water consumption among Caribbean adolescents is important. This study examined the behavioral determinants of water consumption among adolescents in Aruba (the Caribbean) and compared them to those in the Netherlands (Western Europe). We used a theoretical model that integrates the dominant theoretical perspectives in the field of public health, including theories of planned behavior, social norms, and intrinsic motivation. This cross-country study included 1,584 adolescents from Aruba and the Netherlands (52% girls; M = 12.34 years; SD = 2.14). The data were analyzed using regression analyses. This study found that in Aruba, adolescents with higher scores of intrinsic motivation, friends’ descriptive norms, attitudes, and behavioral control regarding water consumption drank more water. Moreover, the associations between water consumption and both intrinsic motivation as well as friends' descriptive norms for adolescents in Aruba were stronger than those found in the Netherlands. These associations imply that it is even more important for Aruban adolescents than Dutch adolescents to be intrinsically motivated or to perceive their friends often consuming water to drink more water. The cross-country comparison implies that future interventions in Aruba aimed at increasing adolescents' water consumption as an alternative to SSB should focus on enhancing their intrinsic motivation while considering their friends' social norms. 9 p.

Contains fulltext : 246807.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Although previous studies have examined alcohol-related posts on social media, the variety in studied platforms and features has been limited. Therefore, by conducting 26 go-along interviews (age 14-18, M = 16.31, SD = .84), this study investigated (1) whether alcohol-related posts differ across SNS features (i.e., chat, feed, story, snap) and (2) whether privacy management strategies play a role in adolescents' decisions to disclose these different alcohol posts across different SNS features. The findings of this study underline the important role of features' affordances. Particularly, based on the public visibility of a feature, adolescents reported eliminating certain audiences (e.g., peers, parents) by adapting privacy settings or by strategically selecting more private features before sharing transgressive alcohol posts on these features. In all, this paper broadens the current knowledge about the depiction of alcohol posts in the heterogeneous media landscape. Implications for interventions are proposed. 27 p.

Contains fulltext : 251603.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Despite efforts to create dedicated smoking areas and no-smoking signs, many smokers continue to light their cigarettes in front of public building entrances-leading to concerns over health consequences for non-smokers passing by. To increase compliance with no-smoking requests, behavioral interventions that tap into habitual and automatic processes seem promising. A pseudo-randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the differential impact of seven behavioral interventions based on Cialdini's principles of persuasion. Over a period of 9 weeks, the number of smokers was counted (total n = 17,930 observations) in front of a German University Medical Center. Relative to a baseline and a control condition, interventions based on the principles of reciprocity, scarcity, and authority were most effective in reducing the number of observed smokers in front of the building entrance (41.5%, 45.7%, and 52.1% reduction rates, respectively). Having observed smokers' behavior in vivo, this study provides substantial evidence for the impact of persuasive strategies on outdoor smoking. In the future, this knowledge should be used to protect non-smokers from second-hand smoke by increasing the use of designated smoking areas, leave to another place to smoke, or not smoke at all. 17 p.

Contains fulltext : 293665.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Objective: Schools are considered an important setting for stimulating healthy weight. The current study is unique in examining effects of a multi-component school-based social network intervention on children’s body mass index z-scores (zBMI). Methods: Four schools were randomly allocated to one of four conditions: a social network intervention using influence agents focusing on water consumption, physical activity, a combination of the two, or a passive control condition. Participants included a total of 201 6- to-11-year-old children (53.7% girls; Mage = 8.51, SDage = 0.93). At baseline, 149 (76.0%) participants had a healthy weight, 29 (14.8%) had overweight and 18 (9.2%) had obesity. Results: Linear mixed effect models indicated that a multi-component school-based social network intervention targeting both water consumption and physical activity was most effective in decreasing children’s zBMI. Conclusion: This study suggests that schools can contribute to the intervention of childhood obesity - even without involving the parents - by targeting both children’s water consumption and physical activity through influential peers, but more research is needed to identify mechanisms of change. 19 februari 2023 18 p.

Item does not contain fulltext Dit artikel is een samenvatting van een proefschrift waarin onderzoek is gedaan naar de vraag hoe menselijk wenselijk is wanneer het gaat om het communicatieve gedrag van conversational agents (chatbots, virtuele servicemedewerkers en robots). De resultaten laten zien dat de effecten van het gebruik van menselijke communicatieve gedragingen door conversational agents afhangen van de servicecontext, de fase in de interactie en de individuele behoeften van de gebruiker. 38 p.

Item does not contain fulltext This paper presents the results of a preregistered pilot study testing an experimental framework to measure altruistic behaviour towards robots. We define altruistic behaviour as behaviour that benefits others at a personal cost to the behaving individual. The pilot study explores feelings of guilt and perceived agency and experience (i.e., mind) in the robot as potential predictors of altruistic behaviour. Using a within-subjects design (n=48), we compared the willingness to perform a dull, repetitive task (i.e., turning pegs in a pegboard) to avoid shaking (harming) either an emotion-simulating robot, or a non-responsive object. The results showed that participants felt significantly more guilty after shaking the robot than after shaking the object, and they perceived more agency and experience in the robot than in the object. Finally, even though participants felt significantly more bored after performing the peg-turning task than after subsequent tasks, they were significantly more willing to repeat this task to avoid shaking the robot again, compared to the object. An exploratory regression analysis showed that feelings of guilt were the only significant predictor of this behaviour. HRI '23: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (Stockholm, Sweden, March 13-16, 2023)

Contains fulltext : 233826.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Individual news consumers' decisions to select specific news articles online are an important part of the present journalistic landscape, spurring scholars' interest in 'selective exposure' and the factors that influence news selection. In the present study, we investigated predictors of young news consumers' self-selection of individual news articles. We used a dataset containing information on upwards of 18,000 news articles that were published in the smartphone and tablet application of the Dutch children's news television program. The dataset contained the headline of each published news article and the number of views that the article generated in the application. This made it possible to investigate which characteristics of the headlines were predictive of children's selection of the article, that is, number of views. In particular, we investigated the effects of emotion and exemplification on selection. The results showed that anxiety-related information and the use of exemplars significantly increased an article's likelihood of being selected by young news consumers. Information related to anger, sadness and positive affect did not significantly predict selection. 16 p.

Contains fulltext : 292949.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) While algorithmic decision-making (ADM) is projected to increase exponentially in the coming decades, the academic debate on whether people are ready to accept, trust, and use ADM as opposed to human decision-making is ongoing. The current research aims at reconciling conflicting findings on 'algorithmic aversion' in the literature. It does so by investigating algorithmic aversion while controlling for two important characteristics that are often associated with ADM: increased benefits (monetary and accuracy) and decreased user control. Across three high-powered (Ntotal = 1192), preregistered 2 (agent: algorithm/human) × 2 (benefits: high/low) × 2 (control: user control/no control) between-subjects experiments, and two domains (finance and dating), the results were quite consistent: there is little evidence for a default aversion against algorithms and in favor of human decision makers. Instead, users accept or reject decisions and decisional agents based on their predicted benefits and the ability to exercise control over the decision. 29 maart 2023 14 p.