When Science Communication Gets Personal

Be relatable, be funny, share a personal anecdote. Show the person behind the science.

Researchers are often advised to appear approachable when communicating their science. At first glance, this seems like great advice, especially considering that scientists seem to struggle with a “smart, but evil” stereotype in the eyes of the public. Studies show time and time again that laypeople perceive researchers as very competent, yet only moderately warm—as distanced nerds in the ivory tower, who are highly skilled, yet socially awkward and maybe even lack moral regard for society. Thus, showing their warm and personable side could be an easy way for researchers to overcome stereotypical perceptions in science communication, right?

My co-authors and I set out to investigate the actual effectiveness of sharing personal details in one’s science communication.

Gaining Trust by Way of Self-Disclosure?

We were especially focused on trust as a powerful key to the effective dissemination of science. Trust consists of two components: competence-related aspects such as expertise and warmth-related aspects such as benevolence and integrity. In other words, people care that a scientist actually knows what they’re talking about and has honest intentions to tell the truth. Because scientists are often stereotyped as competent but not very warm, they might seem to especially lack warmth-related trustworthiness.

Making science communication personal could enhance this aspect of trust. Indeed, decades of social psychological research has highlighted the benefits of such “self-disclosure.” When researchers study friendships as well as work and therapy relationships, they typically find that self-disclosure leads to positive outcomes. Perhaps most importantly, people who disclose personal details are liked more and others feel closer to them. So, self-disclosure seems like the perfect strategy for trustworthy science communication, doesn’t it?

Well, there might be a catch.

The positive effects of self-disclosure depend on how appropriate it seems. Self-disclosure can easily tip into oversharing. Unfortunately, stereotypes about researchers could present a challenge here. People might generally expect scientists to communicate in a serious, matter-of-fact way. Researchers unexpectedly sharing some cute anecdotes about their pets could backfire. They might seem warm, but also unprofessional. So, self-disclosure in science communication might have positive and negative effects at the same time.

Testing the Benefits and Drawbacks of Self-Disclosure

We put these assumptions to the test by conducting a range of studies in various contexts, comparing perceptions of researchers who shared personal details in their science communication to those who did not. First, we ran a series of six online experiments with over 2,400 participants in total. In each study, all participants received the same information, but we either framed bits as “personal” or “neutral”.

In the first three studies, participants viewed presentation slides from alleged science talks, but we gave people different captions for the illustrations. For example, a photo of a rainy window could be captioned as either “view from my window” or “view from a window.” In other studies, self-disclosures were sprinkled into subtitles of animated science videos or social media posts.

Looking across all our studies, researchers who used self-disclosure seemed higher in warmth-related and lower in competence-related trustworthiness. However, the effects were quite small.

To see how these counteractive effects might play out in more immersive, real-world science communication, we invited people to a large science museum in Munich. They visited an exhibition on marine science while listening to an interactive audio guide that again used either self-disclosing or neutral language. Afterward, participants reported their experiences, and self-disclosure did not make a difference. People did not come to a different impression of their tour guide’s trustworthiness if they revealed personal information about themselves or not.

To Disclose or Not to Disclose?

In sum, these studies showed that self-disclosure in science communication can increase warmth-related trustworthiness, but it might come at the cost of decreases in competence-related aspects. You win some, you lose some.

If self-disclosure affects peoples’ impressions of the scientist, does it change the credibility of their message? People are typically more willing to accept scientific evidence as “true” and to act in line with it when it comes from a trustworthy source. In our studies, self-disclosure did not affect people’s acceptance of the evidence. Presumably, this is because the two counteractive effects on trustworthiness cancel each other out.

So, should science communication be more personal? Even though we found evidence that self-disclosure can have some benefits, the effects were very small on average, and their practical relevance is questionable. On the other hand, the drawbacks seem modest, too! Therefore, it may ultimately be a matter of personal preference.

Instead of merely disclosing any personal information, it probably counts much more that researchers reveal the right kind of personal information in their science communication.

For Further Reading

Altenmüller, M. S., Kampschulte, L., Verbeek, L., & Gollwitzer, M. (2023). Science communication gets personal: Ambivalent effects of self-disclosure in science communication on trust in science. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 29(4), 793–812. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000489

Collins, N. L., & Miller, L. C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A metanalytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457–475. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.116.3.457

Fiske, S. T., & Dupree, C. (2014). Gaining trust as well as respect in communicating to motivated audiences about science topics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(Suppl. 4), 13593–13597. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1317505111

Hendriks, F., Kienhues, D., & Bromme, R. (2016). Trust in science and the science of trust. In B. Blöbaum (Ed.), Trust and communication in a digitized world (pp. 143–159). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28059-2_8

Marlene Sophie Altenmüller is a German social psychologist at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich studying the public’s science reception and meta-scientific perspectives on social processes within science. She also has an interest in social justice research and the psychology of art reception and the museum experience.