Laura D Scherer
Biographic Data
| ID | 267890 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura D Scherer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura D |
| FAMILY NAME | Scherer |
| SIGNATURE | SCHERER L D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8660-7115 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Trust in the healthcare system declines after exposure to information about the harms and benefits of breast cancer screening
Conflicting health messages negatively impact trust. Breast cancer screening (BCS) is one area of healthcare where conflicting messages are common. We examined whether women's healthcare system trust was impacted after exposure to information about harms and benefits of BCS. We enrolled 497 women into this study. Participants were administered a decision aid (DA) containing information about the harms and benefits of BCS and reported their health…
Hospice was Created by the KKK'-Black Americans' Perspectives on Hospice Care
Replicability, Robustness, and Reproducibility in Psychological Science
Replication—an important, uncommon, and misunderstood practice—is gaining appreciation in psychology. Achieving replicability is important for making research progress. If findings are not replicable, then prediction and theory development are stifled. If findings are replicable, then interrogation of their meaning and validity can advance knowledge. Assessing replicability can be productive for generating and testing hypotheses by actively confr…
The Importance of Mental Models in Implementation Science
Implementation science is concerned with the study of adoption, implementation and maintenance of evidence-based interventions and use of implementation strategies to facilitate translation into practice. Ways to conceptualize and overcome challenges to implementing evidence-based practice may enhance the field of implementation science. The concept of mental models may be one way to view such challenges and to guide selection, use, and adaptatio…
Quién es más susceptible a la información errónea en línea sobre la salud
Traducción oficial al español del artículo original en inglés efectuada por la Organización Panamericana de la Salud. En caso de discrepancia, prevalecerá la versión original en inglés. Acceso al artículo original: Am J Public Health 2020;110:S276-S277. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.305908
Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking
The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion suggests that people prefer options that offer precisely rather than imprecisely known chances of success. However, past work on people's responses to ambiguity in health treatment contexts found ambiguity seeking rather than aversion. The present work addressed whether such findings reflected a broad tendency for ambiguity seeking in health treatment contexts or whether specific attributions for ambiguity pla…
What if I am the one? Measuring individual differences in emotional sensitivity to probability and emotional reactivity to possibility
Current theories of risk perception point to the powerful role of emotion and the neglect of probabilistic information in the face of risk, but these tendencies differ across individuals. We propose a method for measuring individuals' emotional sensitivity to probability to assess how feelings about probabilities, rather than the probabilities themselves, influence decisions. Participants gave affective ratings (worry or excitement) to 14 risky e…
Who Is Susceptible to Online Health Misinformation
[ ]Guess et al recently reported that a brief digital media literacy intervention improved detection of fake news headlines in both the United States and India 2 Another perspective is that people tend to be susceptible to misinformation that is consistent with their preexisting beliefs or worldview 3 Considerable research has shown that people tend to preferentially believe information that is consistent with their other preexisting beliefs 3 Ho…
Dissociating automatic associations
Weak correspondence across different implicit bias tasks may arise from the contribution of unique forms of automatic and controlled processes to response behavior. Here, we examined the correspondence between estimates of automatic and controlled processing derived from two sequential priming tasks with identical structure and timing designed to separately measure stereotypic (Weapons Identification Task; WIT) and evaluative (Affective Priming T…
Self–other differences in multiattribute decision making
When making decisions where options involve multiple attributes, a person can choose to use a compensatory, utility maximizing strategy, which involves consideration and integration of all available attributes. Alternatively, a person can choose a noncompensatory strategy that extracts only the most important and reliable attributes. The present research examined whether other‐oriented decisions would involve greater reliance on a noncompensatory…
The effect of mood on judgments of subjective well-being
Life satisfaction judgments are thought to represent an overall evaluation of the quality of a person's life as a whole. Thus, they should reflect relatively important and stable characteristics of that person's life. Previous highly cited research has suggested that transient factors, such as the mood that a person experiences at the time that well-being judgments are made, can influence these judgments. However, most existing studies used small…
The psychology of ‘regrettable substitutions’
Bisphenol A is a chemical used to make certain types of plastics and is found in numerous consumer products. Because scientific studies have raised concerns about Bisphenol A's potential impact on human health, it has been removed from some (but not all) products. What many consumers do not know, however, is that Bisphenol A is often replaced with other, less-studied chemicals whose health implications are virtually unknown. This type of situatio…
Toward a greater understanding of the emotional dynamics of the mortality salience manipulation
The experimental manipulation of mortality salience (MS) represents one of the most widely used methodological procedures in social psychology, having been employed by terror management researchers in hundreds of studies over the last 20 years. One of the more provocative conclusions regarding this task is that it does not produce any reliable changes in self-reported affect, a view that we refer to as the affect-free claim. After reviewing 336 p…
Breast cancer anxiety's associations with responses to a chemoprevention decision aid
Threat, Politics, and Attitudes
Social scientists have long known that threatening situations can have a powerful effect on sociopolitical attitudes. One of the more dramatic examples of this phenomenon is the “rally ’round the flag effect,” characterized by dramatic spikes in popularity of the American president. Previous models of rally effects have strongly emphasized the role of anxiety and the desire for security as explanations for these changes in support. In this articl…
Cross-modal evaluative priming
Cross-modal priming occurs when a prime presented in one sensory modality influences responses to a target in a different sensory modality. Currently, demonstrations of cross-modal evaluative priming have been sparse and limited. In the present study, we seek to partially rectify this state of affairs by examining cross-modal evaluative priming from auditory primes to visual targets. Significant cross-modal priming effects were found, but only fo…
Casualties of war and sunk costs
Implicit race bias revisited
Rally effects, threat, and attitude change
Rally 'round the flag effects (J. E. Mueller, 1970) represent sudden and dramatically powerful situation-specific shifts in attitudes toward the American president. However, the extant literature has yet to fully clarify the nature of the psychological dynamics associated with this effect. These ambiguities reflect fundamental differences of opinion among scholars on some very basic questions such as whether overtly experienced emotion should med…
Contrast effects in priming paradigms
Contrast effects have been studied in dozens of experimental paradigms, including the measurement of attitudes in the social psychological literature. However, nearly all of this work has been conducted using explicit reports. In the present research the authors employed a variety of different types of priming tasks in order to gain insight into the nature of contrast effects and the role that automatic processes might play in their emergence. Th…
Rally effects, threat, and attitude change
Rally 'round the flag effects (J. E. Mueller, 1970) represent sudden and dramatically powerful situation-specific shifts in attitudes toward the American president. However, the extant literature has yet to fully clarify the nature of the psychological dynamics associated with this effect. These ambiguities reflect fundamental differences of opinion among scholars on some very basic questions such as whether overtly experienced emotion should med…
Toward a greater understanding of the emotional dynamics of the mortality salience manipulation
The experimental manipulation of mortality salience (MS) represents one of the most widely used methodological procedures in social psychology, having been employed by terror management researchers in hundreds of studies over the last 20 years. One of the more provocative conclusions regarding this task is that it does not produce any reliable changes in self-reported affect, a view that we refer to as the affect-free claim. After reviewing 336 p…
The effect of mood on judgments of subjective well-being
Life satisfaction judgments are thought to represent an overall evaluation of the quality of a person's life as a whole. Thus, they should reflect relatively important and stable characteristics of that person's life. Previous highly cited research has suggested that transient factors, such as the mood that a person experiences at the time that well-being judgments are made, can influence these judgments. However, most existing studies used small…
Contrast effects in priming paradigms
Contrast effects have been studied in dozens of experimental paradigms, including the measurement of attitudes in the social psychological literature. However, nearly all of this work has been conducted using explicit reports. In the present research the authors employed a variety of different types of priming tasks in order to gain insight into the nature of contrast effects and the role that automatic processes might play in their emergence. Th…
Casualties of war and sunk costs
Who Is Susceptible to Online Health Misinformation
[ ]Guess et al recently reported that a brief digital media literacy intervention improved detection of fake news headlines in both the United States and India 2 Another perspective is that people tend to be susceptible to misinformation that is consistent with their preexisting beliefs or worldview 3 Considerable research has shown that people tend to preferentially believe information that is consistent with their other preexisting beliefs 3 Ho…
What if I am the one? Measuring individual differences in emotional sensitivity to probability and emotional reactivity to possibility
Current theories of risk perception point to the powerful role of emotion and the neglect of probabilistic information in the face of risk, but these tendencies differ across individuals. We propose a method for measuring individuals' emotional sensitivity to probability to assess how feelings about probabilities, rather than the probabilities themselves, influence decisions. Participants gave affective ratings (worry or excitement) to 14 risky e…
Self–other differences in multiattribute decision making
When making decisions where options involve multiple attributes, a person can choose to use a compensatory, utility maximizing strategy, which involves consideration and integration of all available attributes. Alternatively, a person can choose a noncompensatory strategy that extracts only the most important and reliable attributes. The present research examined whether other‐oriented decisions would involve greater reliance on a noncompensatory…
Breast cancer anxiety's associations with responses to a chemoprevention decision aid
Contrast effects in priming paradigms
Contrast effects have been studied in dozens of experimental paradigms, including the measurement of attitudes in the social psychological literature. However, nearly all of this work has been conducted using explicit reports. In the present research the authors employed a variety of different types of priming tasks in order to gain insight into the nature of contrast effects and the role that automatic processes might play in their emergence. Th…
Rally effects, threat, and attitude change
Rally 'round the flag effects (J. E. Mueller, 1970) represent sudden and dramatically powerful situation-specific shifts in attitudes toward the American president. However, the extant literature has yet to fully clarify the nature of the psychological dynamics associated with this effect. These ambiguities reflect fundamental differences of opinion among scholars on some very basic questions such as whether overtly experienced emotion should med…
Threat, Politics, and Attitudes
Social scientists have long known that threatening situations can have a powerful effect on sociopolitical attitudes. One of the more dramatic examples of this phenomenon is the “rally ’round the flag effect,” characterized by dramatic spikes in popularity of the American president. Previous models of rally effects have strongly emphasized the role of anxiety and the desire for security as explanations for these changes in support. In this articl…
Cross-modal evaluative priming
Cross-modal priming occurs when a prime presented in one sensory modality influences responses to a target in a different sensory modality. Currently, demonstrations of cross-modal evaluative priming have been sparse and limited. In the present study, we seek to partially rectify this state of affairs by examining cross-modal evaluative priming from auditory primes to visual targets. Significant cross-modal priming effects were found, but only fo…
Casualties of war and sunk costs
Implicit race bias revisited
Breast cancer anxiety's associations with responses to a chemoprevention decision aid
The psychology of ‘regrettable substitutions’
Bisphenol A is a chemical used to make certain types of plastics and is found in numerous consumer products. Because scientific studies have raised concerns about Bisphenol A's potential impact on human health, it has been removed from some (but not all) products. What many consumers do not know, however, is that Bisphenol A is often replaced with other, less-studied chemicals whose health implications are virtually unknown. This type of situatio…
Toward a greater understanding of the emotional dynamics of the mortality salience manipulation
The experimental manipulation of mortality salience (MS) represents one of the most widely used methodological procedures in social psychology, having been employed by terror management researchers in hundreds of studies over the last 20 years. One of the more provocative conclusions regarding this task is that it does not produce any reliable changes in self-reported affect, a view that we refer to as the affect-free claim. After reviewing 336 p…
The effect of mood on judgments of subjective well-being
Life satisfaction judgments are thought to represent an overall evaluation of the quality of a person's life as a whole. Thus, they should reflect relatively important and stable characteristics of that person's life. Previous highly cited research has suggested that transient factors, such as the mood that a person experiences at the time that well-being judgments are made, can influence these judgments. However, most existing studies used small…
Self–other differences in multiattribute decision making
When making decisions where options involve multiple attributes, a person can choose to use a compensatory, utility maximizing strategy, which involves consideration and integration of all available attributes. Alternatively, a person can choose a noncompensatory strategy that extracts only the most important and reliable attributes. The present research examined whether other‐oriented decisions would involve greater reliance on a noncompensatory…
What if I am the one? Measuring individual differences in emotional sensitivity to probability and emotional reactivity to possibility
Current theories of risk perception point to the powerful role of emotion and the neglect of probabilistic information in the face of risk, but these tendencies differ across individuals. We propose a method for measuring individuals' emotional sensitivity to probability to assess how feelings about probabilities, rather than the probabilities themselves, influence decisions. Participants gave affective ratings (worry or excitement) to 14 risky e…
Who Is Susceptible to Online Health Misinformation
[ ]Guess et al recently reported that a brief digital media literacy intervention improved detection of fake news headlines in both the United States and India 2 Another perspective is that people tend to be susceptible to misinformation that is consistent with their preexisting beliefs or worldview 3 Considerable research has shown that people tend to preferentially believe information that is consistent with their other preexisting beliefs 3 Ho…
Dissociating automatic associations
Weak correspondence across different implicit bias tasks may arise from the contribution of unique forms of automatic and controlled processes to response behavior. Here, we examined the correspondence between estimates of automatic and controlled processing derived from two sequential priming tasks with identical structure and timing designed to separately measure stereotypic (Weapons Identification Task; WIT) and evaluative (Affective Priming T…
The Importance of Mental Models in Implementation Science
Implementation science is concerned with the study of adoption, implementation and maintenance of evidence-based interventions and use of implementation strategies to facilitate translation into practice. Ways to conceptualize and overcome challenges to implementing evidence-based practice may enhance the field of implementation science. The concept of mental models may be one way to view such challenges and to guide selection, use, and adaptatio…
Quién es más susceptible a la información errónea en línea sobre la salud
Traducción oficial al español del artículo original en inglés efectuada por la Organización Panamericana de la Salud. En caso de discrepancia, prevalecerá la versión original en inglés. Acceso al artículo original: Am J Public Health 2020;110:S276-S277. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.305908
Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking
The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion suggests that people prefer options that offer precisely rather than imprecisely known chances of success. However, past work on people's responses to ambiguity in health treatment contexts found ambiguity seeking rather than aversion. The present work addressed whether such findings reflected a broad tendency for ambiguity seeking in health treatment contexts or whether specific attributions for ambiguity pla…
Replicability, Robustness, and Reproducibility in Psychological Science
Replication—an important, uncommon, and misunderstood practice—is gaining appreciation in psychology. Achieving replicability is important for making research progress. If findings are not replicable, then prediction and theory development are stifled. If findings are replicable, then interrogation of their meaning and validity can advance knowledge. Assessing replicability can be productive for generating and testing hypotheses by actively confr…
Trust in the healthcare system declines after exposure to information about the harms and benefits of breast cancer screening
Conflicting health messages negatively impact trust. Breast cancer screening (BCS) is one area of healthcare where conflicting messages are common. We examined whether women's healthcare system trust was impacted after exposure to information about harms and benefits of BCS. We enrolled 497 women into this study. Participants were administered a decision aid (DA) containing information about the harms and benefits of BCS and reported their health…
Hospice was Created by the KKK'-Black Americans' Perspectives on Hospice Care
Psychology (18 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (7 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Political science (5 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (4 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (4 works)