ReviewProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
A scientific theory of gist communication and misinformation resistance, with implications for health, education, and policy.
Review in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
40 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effect of a Patient Decision Aid on Preferences for Colorectal Cancer Screening Among Older Adults: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2022Trial
- A New Look at Vaccination Behaviors and Intentions: The Case of Influenza.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Using behavioural science to design public health social media campaigns.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- Understanding health knowledge failures: uncertainty versus misinformation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Public perception of the advertised claims of Damon® appliance system in Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional survey-based study.BMC oral health · 2025Article
- Explaining seasonality increases perceived effectiveness of influenza vaccination: An experimental study.British journal of health psychology · 2025Article
- Predicting User Engagement in Health Misinformation Correction on Social Media Platforms in Taiwan: Content Analysis and Text Mining Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- The infected blood inquiry: Impact on public perceptions of blood supply risk, safety, and donation attitudes.Transfusion medicine (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Dual-systems and Fuzzy-trace Theory Predictions of COVID-19 Risk Taking in Young Adults.Decision (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Article
- Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking.Journal of applied research in memory and cognition · 2024Article
- Building knowledge using a novel web-based intervention to promote HPV vaccination in a diverse, low-income population.Gynecologic oncology · 2024Article
- Thinking clearly about misinformation.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Molecular characteristics and immune microenvironment of gastrointestinal stromal tumours: targets for therapeutic strategies.Frontiers in oncology · 2024Review
- Incivility in COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Discourse and Moral Foundations: Natural Language Processing Approach.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Deepfakes and scientific knowledge dissemination.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Communicating health information with visual displays.Nature medicine · 2023Review
- Social media: Why sharing interferes with telling true from false.Science advances · 2023Review
- The Importance of Fostering and Funding Scientific Research, and its Relevance to Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.Environmental toxicology and chemistry · 2023Article
- Supporting Health and Medical Decision Making: Findings and Insights from Fuzzy-Trace Theory.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2022Article
- Adapting a Theoretically-Based intervention for underserved clinical populations at increased risk for hereditary Cancer: Lessons learned from thePreventive medicine reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
A framework is presented for understanding how misinformation shapes decision-making, which has cognitive representations of gist at its core. I discuss how the framework goes beyond prior work, and how it can be implemented so that valid scientific messages are more likely to be effective, remembered, and shared through social media, while misinformation is resisted. The distinction between mental representations of the rote facts of a message-its verbatim representation-and its gist explains several paradoxes, including the frequent disconnect between knowing facts and, yet, making decisions that seem contrary to those facts. Decision makers can falsely remember the gist as seen or heard even when they remember verbatim facts. Indeed, misinformation can be more compelling than information when it provides an interpretation of reality that makes better sense than the facts. Consequently, for many issues, scientific information and misinformation are in a battle for the gist. A fuzzy-processing preference for simple gist explains expectations for antibiotics, the spread of misinformation about vaccination, and responses to messages about global warming, nuclear proliferation, and natural disasters. The gist, which reflects knowledge and experience, induces emotions and brings to mind social values. However, changing mental representations is not sufficient by itself; gist representations must be connected to values. The policy choice is not simply between constraining behavior or persuasion-there is another option. Science communication needs to shift from an emphasis on disseminating rote facts to achieving insight, retaining its integrity but without shying away from emotions and values.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.