Toward Designing Effective Warning Labels for Health Misinformation on Social Media

Health misinformation on social media has become a major threat to users. To alleviate this issue, platforms such as Twitter have started labeling posts considered as misinformation to warn users. However, the effectiveness of such labels on user perceptions and actions are not clear, as it has not yet been examined by researchers in prior studies. We aim to address this gap through a model, which draws upon concepts from color theory and construal level theory and focuses on the impact of three misinformation label characteristics: background color of the label, abstractness of the message, and assertiveness of the message language. We propose that the effectiveness of these warning labels will lead users to verify, avoid using, and avoid sharing such labeled posts on social media. This paper provides important theoretical contributions and aids policymakers and platform providers by offering insights on what motivates users to take protective actions

Risk as affect:the affect heuristic in cybersecurity

Risk perception is an important driver of netizens’ (Internet users’) cybersecurity behaviours, with a number of factors influencing its formation. It has been argued that the affect heuristic can be a source of variation in generic risk perception. However, a major shortcoming of the supporting research evidence for this assertion is that the central construct, affect, has not been measured or analysed. Moreover, its influence in the cybersecurity domain has not yet been tested. The contribution of the research reported in this paper is thus, firstly, to test the affect heuristic while measuring its three constructs: affect, perceived risk and perceived benefit and, secondly, to test its impact in the cybersecurity domain. By means of two carefully designed studies (N = 63 and N = 233), we provide evidence for the influence of the affect heuristic on risk perception in the cybersecurity domain. We conclude by identifying directions for future research into the role of affect and its impact on cybersecurity risk perception

The impact of gambling speed of play on executive control functions: investigating gambling harm-minimisation approaches to combat impulsive action and impulsive choice

Executive control functions are higher-order cognitive processes essential for exercising self-control over behaviour. These executive processes are the antithesis of impulsivity, which describes actions routinely and automatically triggered by environmental cues without planning and consideration of the consequences of those actions, and represents a construct intimately linked with disordered gambling behaviour. To prevent the potential harm that can be experienced during gambling, it is desirable that decisions and actions within a gambling context are governed by high-levels of executive control, as opposed to thought and actions that are triggered automatically and on impulse. Of interest to the present thesis is the way that technological developments have afforded increased sophistication of the structural characteristics of electronic gambling products, and how these interact with executive control processes during gambling. More specifically, this thesis aims to investigate how the increased speeds of play during gambling, afforded by electronic gambling products, impacts a gambler's ability to exercise self-control over motor actions. An initial systematic critical review investigated the existing research findings pertaining to the impact of gambling speed of play on behaviour and cognition. Following an extensive literature search, 11 studies were selected for review based on several inclusion criteria. Some of the key findings stemming from the review were that games with higher event frequencies were more appealing to gamblers in general, and particularly appealing and enjoyed by problem and pathological gamblers. Faster games were associated with more difficulty quitting the game, and often resulted in more time and money being spent compared to slower games. Overall, the findings from the review suggest a link between increased speeds of play during gambling and reduced self-control, providing justification for the empirical chapters within this thesis that investigated the effects of gambling speed on executive control functions. In a repeated-measures experiment, Experiment 1 identified that as the speed of play is increased during a slot machine gambling simulation, motor response inhibition performance, as assessed using an embedded go/no-go task, is inhibited amongst regular gamblers. This highlights how the structural characteristic of speed during gambling can impair a gamblers ability to exercise self-control during gambling, independent of the presence of a problem or pathological gambling disorder. A second systematic critical review investigated the range of gambling harm-minimisation tools available during electronic gambling and their relative impact on thoughts and behaviour during gambling. Several within-session tools were identified, including enforced breaks in play, pop-up messaging, behavioural tracking tools, monetary limit setting, and visual clock displays. One of the key findings included that the efficacy of pop-up responsible gambling messages in shaping thoughts and behaviour during gambling is dependent on the mode of delivery and content displayed in the messages. Yet to be investigated in depth within the gambling literature is the potential for the use of emotive content to be displayed in pop-up messages, which may serve to have a more powerful influence over thoughts and behaviour compared to non-emotive content. Experiment 2 investigated the ability of new and existing gambling harm-minimisation tools to combat the loss of control over motor actions when gambling at high speeds of play, as demonstrated in Experiment 1. Pop-up responsible gambling messages containing either emotive or non-emotive content were compared to a structural change in the form of a forced discriminatory motor choice procedure and financial punishment intervention, in terms of their ability to facilitate motor response inhibition performance during slot machine gambling. Making structural changes to the slot machine that prevents prepotent response patterns developing and that requires greater levels of active attention over motor actions were successful in facilitating response inhibition performance amongst regular, non-problem gamblers. Changing the salience of no-go cues by financially punishing participants for erroneous motor responses increased motivation to exercise self-control and also improved response inhibition performance. Experiment 3 built on the findings from Experiment 2 and aimed to investigate if inducing more cautious motor response patterns and greater control of motor outputs had wider benefits for cognitive control. It was found that inducing more cautious motor responses during an electronic slot machine simulator resulted in more deliberation and more accurate decisions in an information sampling task (see Clark et al., 2006), as well as a greater tolerance for delayed reward in a monetary delay discounting task (Kirby et al., 1999). It was also found that using emotional content in a pop-up responsible gambling message also facilitated performance on these choice impulsivity tasks, but this effect was independent of a transfer of cautiousness account. This research has theoretical and applied implications to the field of gambling harm-minimisation. The research presented within this thesis suggests that making simple structural changes to electronic gambling products that prevent automatic response patterns developing are not only beneficial for motor control, but also have carry over benefits by reducing impulsive choice tendencies. In addition, the use of emotive content delivered via responsible gambling messages should be considered above the use of non-emotive content, as emotive content had a greater influence on decision-making processes amongst regular, non-problem gamblers

Exploring the influence of message framing and image valence on the effectiveness of anti-speeding posters

A thesis submitted to the Institute for Applied Social Research, University of Bedfordshire, in fulfilment of requirements for the MSc by ResearchRoad safety advertisements that generate emotions have been acknowledged to increase the potential persuasiveness of an advertisement message. Nonetheless, there has been much debate about which message framing and image valence strategy is the most robust and influential persuader. In the current study, 40 UK vehicle users completed a simulated driving experiment and a series of self-report measures exploring the influence of three different types of anti-speeding advertisements: a negative loss-framed poster accompanied with a negative valence image, a positive gain-framed poster paired with a positive valence image, and a neutral anti-speeding poster. No significant differences were found between the three different types of anti-speeding advertisements and participants’ visual attention, memory or speeding behaviour. The results, however, showed that the negative anti-speeding advertisement was rated as significantly more effective in its ability to convince both other vehicle users and the vehicle user themselves to adhere to the legal speed limit. The influence of the differential advertisement strategies also appeared to fluctuate depending on several distinct factors and the disposition of the vehicle user. These findings suggest that emotionally-laden anti-speeding advertisements based on theoretical frameworks may effectively reduce the likelihood for participants to engage in risky driving behaviours and increase vehicle users’ intentions to adhere to the legal speed limit

NEUVis: Comparing Affective and Effective Visualisation

Data visualisations are useful for providing insight from complex scientific data. However, even with visualisation, scientific research is difficult for non-scientists to comprehend. When developed by designers in collaboration with scientists, data visualisation can be used to articulate scientific data in a way that non-experts can understand. Creating human-centred visualisations is a unique challenge, and there are no frameworks to support their design. In response, this thesis presents a practice-led study investigating design methods that can be used to develop Non-Expert User Visualisations (NEUVis), data visualisations for a general public, and the response that people have to different kinds of NEUVis. For this research, two groups of ten users participated in quantitative studies, informed by Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba’s method of Naturalistic Inquiry, which asked non-scientists to express their cognitive and emotional response to NEUVis using different media. The three different types of visualisations were infographics, 3D animations and an interactive installation. The installation used in the study, entitled 18S rDNA, was developed and evaluated as part of this research using John Zimmerman’s Research Through Design methodology. 18S rDNA embodies the knowledge and design methods that were developed for this research, and provided an opportunity for explication of the entire NEUVis design process. The research findings indicate that developing visualisations for the non-expert audience requires a new process, different to the way scientists visualise data. The result of this research describes how creative practitioners collaborate with primary researchers and presents a new human-centred design thinking model for NEUVis. This model includes two design tools. The first tool helps designers merge user needs with data they wish to visualise. The second tool helps designers take that merged information and begin an iterative, user-centred design process