Summary: Narratives and storytelling can help counter vaccine misinformation as the method can create a bridge between scientific evidence and human experience.
Source: Iowa State University
Narratives are a powerful tool that can help explain complex issues, but they can also serve as sources of misinformation, which presents a challenge as public health agencies work to educate people about COVID-19 vaccine.
In a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, author Michael Dahlstrom, a professor and director of Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Mass Communication, examined how narratives or storytelling can help counter misinformation and provide a connection between science and the human experience. Dahlstrom says simply presenting the facts, without some connection, may not help people make informed decisions.
“If the person doesn’t have the context, background or experience to connect facts in accurate ways, you’re basically giving them puzzle pieces that might not fit together and then expecting them to make a clear picture,” he said. “In science, which is often complicated, it can be helpful to present the facts and show how they connect, so people see the broader landscape in an accurate way to make a decision.”
That’s important because narratives often have a disproportionate influence on attitudes and behaviors, when contrasted with scientific information. This is true whether the narrative is about vaccines, climate change or any other topic. Dahlstrom says we are hardwired to make sense of the world around us, and stories are the primary structure we use to make those connections.
For example, a story about how the COVID-19 vaccine is allowing families to reconnect after months apart is more persuasive and compelling than explaining how the vaccine works and its efficacy, Dahlstrom said. However, he cautions that stories won’t always have an impact. On controversial issues, there will be people on both extremes who align with stories that confirm what they believe and attack stories counter to their beliefs.
As Dahlstrom explained in the paper, research has shown that audiences have a difficult time identifying errors in narratives and will generally accept those errors as fact. Even when people know a story is misleading or incorrect, they still tend to believe it, rather than disregard. That is why presenting an equally compelling narrative may be more effective than trying to counter that misinformation with facts alone.
“Narratives can be the cause and remedy of scientific misinformation. It really depends on how the narrator incorporates science in the message. Taking the facts and connecting them in a way that show human experiences add up over time,” Dahlstrom said. “The connections built by stories tend to embed themselves into the connections you’ve already made in your head. They are then deeply connected to other experiences, which is why they’re powerful.”
Dahlstrom says one final takeaway is that stories or narratives are not anti-science, which is often the perception of scientists. It’s how the author crafts the story or uses the narrative that is often the problem.
About this psychology and vaccines research news
Source: Iowa State University
Contact: Fred Love – Iowa State University
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“The narrative truth about scientific misinformation” by Michael F. Dahlstrom. PNAS
Abstract
The narrative truth about scientific misinformation
Science and storytelling mean different things when they speak of truth. This difference leads some to blame storytelling for presenting a distorted view of science and contributing to misinformation. Yet others celebrate storytelling as a way to engage audiences and share accurate scientific information.
This review disentangles the complexities of how storytelling intersects with scientific misinformation.
Storytelling is the act of sharing a narrative, and science and narrative represent two distinct ways of constructing reality. Where science searches for broad patterns that capture general truths about the world, narratives search for connections through human experience that assign meaning and value to reality.
I explore how these contrasting conceptions of truth manifest across different contexts to either promote or counter scientific misinformation. I also identify gaps in the literature and identify promising future areas of research. Even with their differences, the underlying purpose of both science and narrative seeks to make sense of the world and find our place within it.
While narrative can indeed lead to scientific misinformation, narrative can also help science counter misinformation by providing meaning to reality that incorporates accurate science knowledge into human experience.