Between the Facts and a Hard Place: Trust Judgments and Affective Responses in Information-Seeking Processes During Early COVID-19

ABSTRACT

This study examined the formation of trust judgments of information sources about COVID-19 and the role played by emotions in this information seeking process. Twenty-seven in-depth interviews with Americans revealed that both trust and affective responses were present in information seeking of health messages, thus discovering the applicability of Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model’s propositions during pandemics. Using qualitative methods to assess RISP variables in a new context (COVID-19), the study proposes modifications to the existing model. It also extends the socio-psychological traditions on which the RISP model was based, by finding that when evaluating information sources during pandemics, under conditions of high issue relevance, individuals’ peripheral evaluation of messages might precede systematic evaluation and might be used as a selection criteria for further elaboration. Finally, the assessments of source credibility as a peripheral cue in this study expand current theoretical understandings by including compassion as a possible new dimension.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Complete questionnaire is available upon request from the authors.

2. Participants will be referred to as P and the associated number. Thus P26 indicates participant 26.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.