Search

The media is a powerful tool for informing the public about health treatments. In particular, the Internet has gained importance as a widely valued source for health information for parents and adolescents. Nonetheless, traditional sources, such as newspapers, continue to report on health innovations. But do websites and newspaper reports provide balanced information? We performed a systematic media analysis to evaluate and compare media coverage of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine on websites and in newspapers in Germany and Spain. We assessed to what extent the media provide complete (pros and cons), transparent (absolute instead of relative numbers), and correct information about the epidemiology and etiology of cervical cancer as well as the effectiveness and costs of the HPV vaccine. As a basis for comparison, a facts box containing current scientific evidence about cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine was developed. The media analysis included 61 websites and 141 newspaper articles in Germany, and 41 websites and 293 newspaper articles in Spain. Results show that 57% of German websites and 43% of German newspaper reports communicated correct estimates of epidemiological data, whereas in Spain 39% of the websites and 20% of the newspaper did so. While two thirds of Spanish websites explicitly mentioned causes of cervical cancer as well as spontaneous recovery, German websites communicated etiological information less frequently. Findings reveal that correct estimates about the vaccine's effectiveness were mentioned in 10% of German websites and 6% of German newspaper reports; none of the Spanish newspaper reports and 2% of Spanish websites reported effectiveness correctly. Only German websites (13%) explicitly referred to scientific uncertainty regarding the vaccine's evaluation. We conclude that the media lack balanced reporting on the dimensions completeness, transparency, and correctness. We propose standards for more balanced reporting on websites and in newspapers., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Recent studies on the malleability of gender stereotypes show that they are flexible, dynamic structures that change with the passage of time. In a study, we examined perceptions about men and women of the past, present, and future in Spain and focused on the influence of an important demographic variable on these perceptions: the population size of people's location of residence. Results showed that people perceived an increase in similarity of men and women from the past to the present and from the present to the future. In less-populated locations, however, men and women were more gender stereotyped and, consequently, still perceived to be further from equality than those in more populated areas. We concluded that the study of dynamic gender stereotypes benefits from extensive research in populations that vary in their demographic characteristics and shows the importance of recent movements in rural areas supporting women's participation in the modernization process.

Causal beliefs often facilitate decision making. However, strong causal beliefs can also lead to neglect of relevant empirical evidence causing errors in risky decision making (e.g., medical, financial). We investigated the impact of pre-training and post-experience on the evaluation of empirical evidence in a two-alternative medical diagnostic task. Participants actively searched for information about two patients on the basis of four available cues. The first experiment indicated that pre-training can weaken the strong influence of causal beliefs reducing neglect of empirical evidence. The second experiment demonstrated that increasing amounts of empirical evidence can improve people's ability to decide in favor of a correct diagnosis. The current research converges with other recent work to clarify key mechanisms and boundary conditions shaping the influence of causal beliefs and empirical evidence in decisions and causal judgments.