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This study investigated the impact of readers' prior beliefs and level of in-group identification on the comprehension of controversial texts. Psychology students from a university that is known for its specialisation on psychoanalysis in clinical psychology read two controversial texts on the issue of whether cognitive behavioural therapy or psychoanalysis is more effective. Participants' beliefs and their in-group identification were assessed before reading and comprehension was assessed with a verification task. Results revealed a better comprehension of the belief-consistent text for high identifiers -- regardless of whether this text was socially affirming or socially threatening. Low identifiers favouring psychoanalysis exhibited weak situation models for both texts, whereas a stronger comprehension for the social-affirming text was found for low identifiers favouring cognitive behavioural therapy. These results suggest that readers' beliefs and their level of in-group identification with a relevant social group are both sources for a biased comprehension of social scientific issues. Highlights What is already known about this topic when confronted with conflicting information, readers have a weaker memory for belief-inconsistent compared with belief-consistent information (belief-consistency effect).A defensive mechanism used by readers to avoid and reduce inconsistencies and cognitive dissonance is selective exposure, which can occur on the personal level (i.e., avoiding belief-inconsistent information) and also on the social level (i.e., avoiding socially threatening information).

This study investigated the impact of readers' prior beliefs and level of in‐group identification on the comprehension of controversial texts. Psychology students from a university that is known for its specialisation on psychoanalysis in clinical psychology read two controversial texts on the issue of whether cognitive behavioural therapy or psychoanalysis is more effective. Participants' beliefs and their in‐group identification were assessed before reading and comprehension was assessed with a verification task. Results revealed a better comprehension of the belief‐consistent text for high identifiers – regardless of whether this text was socially affirming or socially threatening. Low identifiers favouring psychoanalysis exhibited weak situation models for both texts, whereas a stronger comprehension for the social‐affirming text was found for low identifiers favouring cognitive behavioural therapy. These results suggest that readers' beliefs and their level of in‐group identification with a relevant social group are both sources for a biased comprehension of social scientific issues. Highlights: What is already known about this topic When confronted with conflicting information, readers have a weaker memory for belief‐inconsistent compared with belief‐consistent information (belief‐consistency effect).A defensive mechanism used by readers to avoid and reduce inconsistencies and cognitive dissonance is selective exposure, which can occur on the personal level (i.e., avoiding belief‐inconsistent information) and also on the social level (i.e., avoiding socially threatening information). What this paper adds When a social scientific controversy affects entire groups, social factors such as social categorisation and identification may affect how individuals deal with conflicting texts.The present study investigated the impact of readers' prior beliefs and their identification with a social group on the comprehension of two controversial texts on a social scientific issue.Results showed that the belief‐consistency effect as a consequence of a belief‐protection mechanism (i.e., selectively exposing oneself to belief‐consistent information) is stronger than the need to avoid socially threatening information for high identifiers. Implications for theory, policy or practice Defensive‐motivated readers are problematic for the communication of social scientific issues.Defence motivation seems to be driven by both readers' beliefs and their level of in‐group identification with a relevant social group that shares or does not share the same belief.Based on our results, elaborative processing of contra‐arguments might be fostered by highlighting social groups with which readers have only moderate identification but that are nonetheless relevant for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public debates about socio-scientific issues (e.g. climate change or violent video games) are often accompanied by attacks on the reputation of the involved scientists. Drawing on the social identity approach, we report a minimal group experiment investigating the conditions under which scientists are perceived as non-prototypical, non-reputable, and incompetent. Results show that in-group affirming and threatening scientific findings (compared to a control condition) both alter laypersons' evaluations of the study: in-group affirming findings lead to more positive and in-group threatening findings to more negative evaluations. However, only in-group threatening findings alter laypersons' perceptions of the scientists who published the study: scientists were perceived as less prototypical, less reputable, and less competent when their research results imply a threat to participants' social identity compared to a non-threat condition. Our findings add to the literature on science reception research and have implications for understanding the public engagement with science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laypersons' engagement with science has grown over the last decade, especially in Internet environments. While this development has many benefits, scientists also face the challenge of devaluation and public criticism by laypersons. Embedding this phenomenon in social-psychological theories and research on value-behavior correspondence, we investigated moral threat as a factor influencing laypersons' engagement with science. Across three studies, we hypothesized and found that moral values shape the way laypersons evaluate and communicate about science when these values are threatened in a given situation and central to people's self-concept. However, prior research on the underlying mechanism of moral threat effects cannot fully rule out value salience as an alternative explanation. To close this gap, we situationally induced value salience while varying the degree of moral threat (Study 3). Our findings indicate that moral threat amplifies the influence of moral values on laypersons' evaluation of science above and beyond value salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the notion that scientific research programs and empirical findings are fundamentally devalued when they threaten a perceiver's social identity. Findings from three studies show the following: (1) identification with the group of 'gamers' (i.e., people who play video games on a regular basis) influences the extent to which perceivers devalue research suggesting that playing violent video games has negative consequences; (2) this effect is mediated by the feeling that the group of gamers is being stigmatized by such research (Studies 1 and 2) as well as by anger about this research (Study 2); (3) the effect of in-group identification on negative research evaluations cannot be explained by attitude or behavioral preference inconsistency (Studies 1 and 3); and (4) strongly identified gamers not only devalue a specific scientific study but also generalize their negative evaluations to the entire field of violent video games research (Study 3). The findings suggest that the influence of social identity processes on the evaluation of research is larger than it has previously been recognized. Implications of these findings for science communication are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]