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Tell me a story about getting vaccinated
To test the effects of different vaccination advocacy message strategies on attitudes toward HPV vaccination, we randomly assigned study participants (N = 963) to one of four different message-strategy groups: (1) The Narrative Strategy–A short story about a parent, Mark, who takes his 11-year-old daughter Emma to the doctor. During the visit, the doctor recommends […]
3 simple strategies to sway people who don’t want to listen
Are Democrats just bad at communication? Consider all the hand-wringing after the release of the Mueller Report. There were 448 pages of documented evidence of shady dealings by a presidential candidate and his minions before and after the 2016 election and the 2017 inauguration. Before and after its release, Democrats in Congress, on talk shows, […]
On encountering another smartest person in the room
Are you in the right room? One of the problems with being the smartest person in the room is you too often expect no one else in the room will have anything of value to add, and that <sigh> you will have to expend soooo much energy getting those people who keep speaking up to […]
The Last Word on Improving Patient Satisfaction
You’ve improved your patient-care processes and outcomes but you’re still not happy with your patient satisfaction scores. And now, with CMS reimbursements increasingly tied to those scores, the pressure is rising to raise them. Fortunately, the fields of psychology and behavioral economics may offer some easy-to-implement solutions to improve patient satisfaction scores both coming and […]
Can you punctuate a quote?
How good are you at quotation punctuation? Everyone who writes news releases for a living knows the value of quotations. But surprisingly few people graduating from college today can actually punctuate sentences with quotations in them. Can you? Here are 10 punctuation challenges. A pro should be able to get all 10 correct. (1) im proud […]
Reducing Risky Behavior
Risk Communication Can Be Risky Environmental Safety and Public Health Policy-Makers Often Make Matters Worse Communication of science-based information to the general public…particularly health-related information…is a well-studied field. This may be because it is so often done so poorly. Many public behavior interventions, especially those based on intuition, “common sense,” political persuasion or religious belief, […]
The Paradox of Political Humor
Q: Is political humor always anti-establishment? A: Only if it’s funny. Humor tends to be diminishing. When it diminishes others, it reflects poorly on the character of those who deliver it—unless they are professional comedians. And even then, it can be received poorly. Whether political or not, humor directed at people who are weak look […]
The Politics of HPV Vaccination Advocacy
Who would YOU listen to? A study of the influence of spokesperson expertise My paper, “The politics of HPV vaccination advocacy: Effects of source expertise on the effectiveness of a pro-vaccine message,” was recently accepted for publication in the 71st Annual New York State Communication Association Conference Proceedings. The conference was held in Ellenville, NY, […]
Reverse Psychology?
Yes, apparently you can actually get people to do something (or maybe NOT do something) by encouraging them to do the opposite. There is a growing body of research that shows people can be discouraged from doing things they find pleasurable by paying them to do those things. Theorists believe it demonstrates one of the […]
Calling all racists
So you think we live an a Post-Racist Society? Well, what was your gut reaction to the title of this post? I’m a fan of Cognitive Friction. It happens when you take two sets of facts or ideas or ways of looking at the world and you rub them together. For instance, many people think we […]
