Observational studyPloS one2021
When research is me-search: How researchers' motivation to pursue a topic affects laypeople's trust in science.
Observational study in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 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
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Using Moralization as a Persuasion Strategy in Public Health Messages: A Cross-Sectional, Experimental Study on Vaping.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Trial
- Messenger-Message Discordance: When Presenting Workplace Disparities,Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2026Article
- More Biased, Yet More Informed? Documenting Me-Search Stigma Primarily Linked to Researchers' Own Group Memberships.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2026Article
- Who is at risk of bias? Examining dispositional differences in motivated science reception.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2025Article
- Perceptions of science, science communication, and climate change attitudes in 68 countries - the TISP dataset.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Voices for change: inclusion of lived experience self-injury research, practice, education, and advocacy.Australian journal of psychology · 2025Article
- Doubly Marginalized: Addressing the Minority Stressors Experienced by LGBTQ+ Researchers Who Do LGBTQ+ Research.Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education · 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
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research is often fueled by researchers' scientific, but also their personal interests: Sometimes, researchers decide to pursue a specific research question because the answer to that question is idiosyncratically relevant for themselves: Such "me-search" may not only affect the quality of research, but also how it is perceived by the general public. In two studies (N = 621), we investigate the circumstances under which learning about a researcher's "me-search" increases or decreases laypeople's ascriptions of trustworthiness and credibility to the respective researcher. Results suggest that participants' own preexisting attitudes towards the research topic moderate the effects of "me-search" substantially: When participants hold favorable attitudes towards the research topic (i.e., LGBTQ or veganism), "me-searchers" were perceived as more trustworthy and their research was perceived as more credible. This pattern was reversed when participants held unfavorable attitudes towards the research topic. Study 2 furthermore shows that trustworthiness and credibility perceptions generalize to evaluations of the entire field of research. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
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.