Join us for the next Norms and Behavioral Change Talk on Thursday, May 21st, 2026 at 1:00pm EST with Dr. Silvia Saccardo of Carnegie Mellon University!
Abstract: Attention is a scarce cognitive resource, and directing it toward consequential decisions is a central challenge in today’s information-saturated environments. This challenge is critical in healthcare, where attending to health information can have life-saving implications yet patients are easily overwhelmed by competing messages. Drawing on research suggesting that people direct attention toward issues with higher expected value, we test whether messages designed to raise the perceived value of attending to health information increase patient engagement. Across three pre-registered RCTs in the context of preventive screenings, we find that despite being widely used by healthcare systems and expected by healthcare professionals to work, such messages actually decrease patient engagement with potentially life-saving health information. Analyses of field data and companion online studies suggest that these messages inadvertently direct attention to the possibility of receiving unwanted news, such that interventions aimed at making information harder to ignore may, paradoxically, make it more tempting to avoid.
Visit her personal website here
Zoom - Register here for Zoom Link.
Prior to the talk, ECR speaker, Marcelo Woo from the University of Nottingham will also give a short presentation titled 'Heads in the Sand: Theory and Experiment on the Interdependence of Information Avoidance'.
Visit his personal website here
