Journal article
Samantha Hautea, J. Besley, Hyesun Choung
Public Understanding of Science, 2024
Public Understanding of Science, 2024
Semantic Scholar
DOI
PubMed
Cite
Cite
APA
Click to copy
Hautea, S., Besley, J., & Choung, H. (2024). Communicating trust and trustworthiness through scientists’ biographies: Benevolence beliefs. Public Understanding of Science.
Chicago/Turabian
Click to copy
Hautea, Samantha, J. Besley, and Hyesun Choung. “Communicating Trust and Trustworthiness through Scientists’ Biographies: Benevolence Beliefs.” Public Understanding of Science (2024).
MLA
Click to copy
Hautea, Samantha, et al. “Communicating Trust and Trustworthiness through Scientists’ Biographies: Benevolence Beliefs.” Public Understanding of Science, 2024.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{samantha2024a,
title = {Communicating trust and trustworthiness through scientists’ biographies: Benevolence beliefs},
year = {2024},
journal = {Public Understanding of Science},
author = {Hautea, Samantha and Besley, J. and Choung, Hyesun}
}
Abstract
A goal of many science communicators is to foster trust in scientists and their work. This study investigates if existing textual resources that scientists create in the course of their regular activities can be improved to enhance perceptions of scientists as trustworthy. Building on Mayer et al.’s integrative model of organizational trust, we examine how communicating benevolence through short biographies can affect trustworthiness perceptions using a 3 (degree of benevolence information: high, unspecified, low) × 3 (research area: crop genetics, corn and soy genetics, biotechnology use) survey design. We find that the degree of benevolence information significantly influences perceptions of benevolence and integrity, as well as willingness to trust, with these effects being consistent across different research areas. However, the degree of benevolence communicated had no significant effect on the perceived competence of the scientists. These findings underscore the importance of highlighting benevolence in communication to positively influence trustworthiness perceptions, thus offering insights for science communication practices.