ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2025
Impact of News Portrayals of Physicians as Vulnerable on the Public's Evaluation and Trust in Physicians Under Different Involvement Levels: Quantitative Study.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Impact of News Portrayals of Physicians as Vulnerable on the Public's Evaluation and Trust in Physicians Under Different Involvement Levels: Quantitative Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNews portrayals of physicians, especially in China, often depict them as vulnerable-overworked, with inadequate compensation, or as victims of violence. These portrayals may send mixed signals to the public, yet their impact remains underexplored. Understanding their impact is essential for informing media strategies and improving physician-patient relationships.
objectiveThis study investigated how portrayals of physicians as vulnerable influence public evaluations of their competence, warmth, morality, and overall trust and considered the moderating effects of involvement (ie, hospital visit frequency).
methodsFour studies were conducted. Study 1 (N=492) examined the effects of daily exposure to vulnerable portrayals, and study 2 (N=710) experimentally exposed participants to vulnerable portrayals to directly investigate the causal relationship between exposure and evaluations with involvement as a hypothesized moderator. Study 3 (N=565) manipulated situational involvement using an imagination task, whereas study 4 (N=436) embedded involvement-enhancing content into news articles to improve ecological validity.
resultsStudy 1 revealed that among individuals with low or moderate involvement, greater exposure to vulnerable physician portrayals in everyday life predicted more favorable overall evaluations of physicians (low involvement: B=0.11 and P=.04; moderate involvement: B=0.20 and P<.001). No significant effect was found among high-involvement individuals (P>.68 in all cases), suggesting an inverted U-shaped moderating effect of involvement. Study 2 supported this pattern-vulnerable portrayals had no significant impact among individuals with low or high involvement (t
conclusionsThe findings reveal a complex relationship between news portrayals of vulnerable physicians and public perceptions moderated by involvement. These results have practical implications for leveraging media to increase public trust and improve physician-patient relationships.
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.