ArticleAnnals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine2019
Effects of Media Exposure to Conflicting Information About Mammography: Results From a Population-based Survey Experiment.
Article in Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- The effect of conflicting versus consistent messaging on older women's support for breast cancer screening cessation.Patient education and counseling · 2025Trial
- Effects of Exposure to Conflicting Health Information on Topic-Specific Information Sharing and Seeking Intentions.Health communication · 2025Trial
- Vulnerability to the Effects of Conflicting Health Information: Testing the Moderating Roles of Trust in News Media and Research Literacy.Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education · 2023Trial
- The Impact of Information Presentation and Cognitive Dissonance on Processing Systematic Review Summaries: A Randomized Controlled Trial on Bicycle Helmet Legislation.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Trial
- Effects of Prior Exposure to Conflicting Health Information on Responses to Subsequent Unrelated Health Messages: Results from a Population-Based Longitudinal Experiment.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2022Trial
- Healthy or not? The impact of conflicting health-related information on attentional resources.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2022Trial
- The Challenge of Debunking Health Misinformation in Dynamic Social Media Conversations: Online Randomized Study of Public Masking During COVID-19.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Trial
- Confusion and nutritional backlash from news media exposure to contradictory information about carbohydrates and dietary fats.Public health nutrition · 2019Trial
- Can Knowledge Counteract Conflict? A Partial Replication Study of PFAS Science Communication.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2026Article
- Individual-level and community-level factors associated with breast cancer screening among women of reproductive age in Tanzania: a multilevel analysis of the 2022 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- Conflictive Uncertainty: A Framework for Understanding the Aversion to Conflicting Information in Social Contexts.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2025Article
- Trust in the healthcare system declines after exposure to information about the harms and benefits of breast cancer screening.Journal of health psychology · 2025Article
- Evaluation of how US women react to a decision aid informing them of the harms and benefits of mammography: a qualitative study.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Conflicting health information increases fear of disease progression in HPV-infected individuals: disease uncertainty as mediator and tolerance of uncertainty as buffer.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Stage-Stratified Incidence Rates of Colorectal Adenocarcinoma Among Patients Aged 46 to 49 in the United States.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Country of origin effects in explaining motivations for COVID-19 vaccine acceptance: A cognitive-affective-norm approach.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Spillover Effects of COVID-19 News Coverage on Willingness to Participate in Medical Research in a Diverse Sample of US Older Adults.Communication research · 2023Article
- Sustaining positive perceptions of science in the face of conflicting health information: An experimental test of messages about the process of scientific discovery.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Article
- Effects of Exposure to Conflicting Information About Mammography on Cancer Information Overload, Perceived Scientists' Credibility, and Perceived Journalists' Credibility.Health communication · 2023Article
- Uncertainty in healthcare and health decision making: Five methodological and conceptual research recommendations from an interdisciplinary team.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough there is growing theoretical and empirical support for the proposition that media exposure to conflicting health information negatively influences public understanding and behavior, few studies have causally linked exposure to conflict with undesirable outcomes. Such outcomes might be particularly likely in the context of mammography, given widespread media attention to conflicting recommendations about the age at and frequency with which average-risk women should be screened for breast cancer. PURPOSE: The current study tests whether exposure to conflicting information about mammography negatively influences women's affective and cognitive responses and examines whether effects vary by socioeconomic position.
methodsWe conducted an online survey experiment in 2016 with a population-based sample of U.S. women aged 35-55 (N = 1,474). Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that differed in the level of conflict about mammography presented in a news story (no, low, medium, or high conflict), stratifying by poverty level.
resultsGreater exposure to conflict increased women's negative emotional responses to the story they read, their confusion about and backlash toward cancer prevention recommendations and research, and their ambivalence about mammography and other types of cancer screening, though ambivalence leveled off at high levels of exposure. There was little evidence that effects varied across socioeconomic position.
conclusionsFindings add to the growing evidence base documenting undesirable outcomes of exposure to conflicting health information. Future research should examine whether the negative affective and cognitive responses observed translate into behavior, which could have implications for both health campaigns and patient-provider communication.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.