Examining people's willingness to read complicated information during a crisis.

What is it about?

This experiment looked at whether the presence of technical language (jargon), compared to simpler terms, impacted the way people evaluated crisis messaging. We found that although jargon negatively impacted message evaluations for crisis topics in general, for COVID-19, this relationship was not found. This suggests that, when people are motivated, they do not mind consuming complicated information

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Why is it important?

Although it is often the case that people prefer information when it is communicated simply (as opposed to technically and with jargon), our experiment finds that - in times of crisis - people do not care as much about the simplicity of information. This suggests that when audiences are motivated, communicators should feel comfortable speaking about issues in ways that are most precise, even if this precision will include technical language. When audiences are not motivated, however, practitioners are well-advised to keep things simple.