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. 2021 Apr 27:9:649507.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.649507. eCollection 2021.

Humor and Fear-Two Sides of the Same Coin?: Experimental Evidence on Humor Appeals in Health Communication Related to Childhood Vaccination

Florian Fischer  1   2 , Franziska Carow  3 , Stefanie Gillitzer  3
Affiliations

Humor and Fear-Two Sides of the Same Coin?: Experimental Evidence on Humor Appeals in Health Communication Related to Childhood Vaccination

Florian Fischer et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Until now, health communication has largely failed to debunk fears and caveats related to vaccination. This study aims to investigate the effects of different text types used in health communication in an experimental study design. A neutrally formulated text was compared to a humorous text using the formula of a fairytale. Overall, the study indicates no additional value in using the humorous format as an innovative and target-group-oriented approach to inform readers about scientific evidence related to vaccination. Although the effects of the two text types do not differ, the credibility of the neutrally formulated text was much more likely to be judged as high. This indicates that the perception of credibility is not the only criterion in health communication leading to knowledge gains and changes in health-related attitudes and behaviors.

Keywords: communication; emotion; health; herd immunity; humor; science; vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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