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Category: Project

Description: In an attempt to display themselves as warm, approachable, and trustworthy, researchers might reveal personal details about themselves (i.e., self-disclosure) when communicating their science to the public. Here, we test whether self-disclosure in science communication can actually increase public trust in science. We present six online experiments (overall N=2431), integrate their results in a mini meta-analysis and report a field experiment in a science museum (N=480): In sum, our findings suggest that self-disclosure leads to small, but measurable increases in laypeople’s feelings of closeness towards researchers and perceptions of researchers’ warmth-related trustworthiness; yet, self-disclosure also leads to decreases in competence-related trustworthiness perceptions. The credibility of scientific findings was, overall, unaffected by self-disclosing communication. Findings from the field study further question whether self-disclosure in science communication has any practical relevance.