Public trust and communicating uncertainty

In a study of 5,780 individuals, researchers combined a field experiment on a mainstream news website with a meta-analysis of four survey experiments testing how people react to uncertainty communicated in online news, and found that prior beliefs about topics did not influence responses to uncertainty in news but instead influenced trust in facts, suggesting that communicating numerical uncertainty about measurable and contested facts may not necessarily be counterproductive.

Article #19-13678: “The effects of communicating uncertainty on public trust in facts and numbers,” by Anne Marthe van der Bles, Sander van der Linden, Alexandra L.J. Freeman, and David J. Spiegelhalter.

MEDIA CONTACT: Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge, UNITED KINGDOM; tel: +44 7727656116; email:

[email protected]

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