Episode Summary

On today’s episode we discuss whether presenting people with facts or stories are more effective in changing their attitudes about safety.

Episode Notes

Topics:

  • Drew’s recently published paper and how it relates to this topic.
  • Vaccinations and the current wave of anti-vaccination bias.
  • Testing the effects of stories vs. facts.
  • Alternative beliefs.
  • Why we think certain claims are nonsense.

Quotes:

“They found that the one that has a story of someone whose child has had measles along with the photo with the measles, had a very strong effect on attitude change…”

“Typically, as safety professionals, we often want to influence a change in what people are doing in the organization, be it managers or workers.”

“I would ask what sort of workplace are you running that the difference between whether people are working at heights safely…is a tiny increment in how scared they are of working at heights?”

Resources:

Horne, Z., Powell, D., Hummel, J. E., & Holyoak, K. J. (2015). Countering antivaccination attitudesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences112(33), 10321-10324.

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