Jargon avoidance in the public communication of science: Single- or double-edged sword for information evaluation?

Abstract

Background

Evaluating scientific information has become challenging due to information complexity and the loss of gatekeepers, especially online (McGrew et al., 2018). A common strategy to improve nonexperts understanding of scientific information is to avoid jargon. This, however might cause recipients to overestimate their understanding of the subject (easiness effect; Scharrer et al., 2012, 2019) and lower the perceived expertise of the author (Zimmermann & Jucks, 2018).

Aims

With our study, we ask whether there is a middle-ground, where the advantages of reducing jargon - namely increasing text comprehensiveness - are utilized, while avoiding its downsides. Additionally, we examined whether processing fluency and metacognitive judgments explain the easiness effect.

Methods

In an online survey (N = 1192), participants read a text with varying jargon levels and were asked (besides others) about their agreement with the text, their certainty of this agreement, their desire to consult an expert, and perceptions of the author's expertise, integrity, and benevolence.

Results

We could not conceptually replicate the adverse effects of avoiding jargon, but obtained positive effects on the perceptions of author's integrity and benevolence. While fluency significantly mediated the relationship between jargon usage and the credibility variables, metacognitive judgements did not.

Conclusions

Thus, appropriately avoiding jargon does not necessarily lead to overestimated judgment abilities and can even enhance trust in scientific experts. We discuss study design, text comprehensibility, and the robustness of the easiness effect for further implications in science communication.