C Skurka
Biographic Data
| ID | 53606 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Skurka |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Skurka |
| SIGNATURE | SKURKA C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0613-3475 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
“It Is in the Air”: Seeking and Scanning for Information About Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Among Young-Adult Men Who Have Sex with Men in the US
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a biomedical intervention that dramatically lowers one’s risk of acquiring HIV. However, PrEP uptake has been slow among young-adult men who have sex with men (YMSM) – one group highly vulnerable to HIV infection in the US. Drawing from health communication scholarship on information seeking and scanning, as well as on concepts from the health belief model, we convened individual interviews and focus groups with…
Mitigating the News-Finds-Me Perception: Evaluating the intended (and unintended) effects of educational warnings on political learning
Social media foster a News-Finds-Me perception (NFM), whereby individuals believe important news will “find them” without actively seeking it. Although the negative consequences of NFM are well-documented, strategies to mitigate NFM’s effects remain unexplored. In a pre-registered 3 (educational warning: general vs. personalized vs. control) ✕ 2 (NFM level: low vs. high) between-subjects experiment ( N = 405), we test whether general educational …
Sustainability in the communications classroom: Experiences, interests and future directions from an undergraduate perspective
Purpose The United Nation’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to address climate change, gender and health inequities and other issues. The communications field remains a pivotal arena for fostering awareness and education about sustainability. This study aims to explore the extent to which undergraduates at a large, research-focused institution in the USA view sustainability topics as integrated into the journalism and mass communicati…
Harnessing Anger to Persuade: The Moderating Roles of Retributive Efficacy and Prior Attitudes
Given unresolved questions about the conditions under which anger appeals persuade, this investigation examined whether an anger appeal is more persuasive if it includes efficacy content emphasizing retribution. It also examined whether effects hinge on initial attitudes toward the advocated issue – here, regulation of soda marketing to improve children's health. Findings from this 3 (offense component: high, low, none) × 3 (efficacy component: r…
Who is Willing to Learn About Inequality? Predictors of Choice Exposure to Messaging About Racial Disparities in Air Pollution Effects Among Black and White U.S. Residents
Widespread public awareness is needed to address health disparities and push for effective and equitable solutions. However, in a high choice media environment, this can only be achieved to the extent that people opt to consume disparity messaging. Drawing on theories of selective exposure, the present research uses a pre-registered online study conducted with U.S. adult participants to examine identity-based predictors of choice exposure to a ra…
Green and Good? Examining Intended and Unintended Effects of Morally Framed Climate Messages
Based on Moral Foundations Theory, message framing, and the Sacred Values Protection Model, this pre-registered experiment tested the effects of five different moral frames in climate change messages among N = 715 U.S. adults. Contrary to prior research, we did not find evidence that matching a message’s moral frame to individuals’ endorsements of moral foundations enhances intended positive outcomes, including perceived message effectiveness (PM…
Making Inroads with the Outgroup: The Interactive Effects of Point of View and Group Membership in Period Poverty Narratives
Over one billion people experience the threats that period poverty (lack of access to menstrual products) poses to their well-being. Public health advocates have used storytelling as a communication strategy to raise awareness and motivate behaviors that help address this issue. In an experiment with 1467 U.S. adults, we investigated the effects of period poverty narratives among individuals with different gender identities. Given a story can be …
How Forced Versus Selective Exposure Matters for the Influence of Emotional Appeals About Climate Change in a Sample of Americans
Researchers studying the influence of strategic science messages have overlooked the fact that people are selective in the content they consume. In this experiment, participants were “forced” to view one of three climate appeals (threat, humor, informational), reflecting the typical between-subjects experiment, or they were permitted to choose between one of these appeals (or topical alternatives), reflecting real-world media choice. Compared wit…
News Finds Me as the illusion of competence: Evidence for Overconfidence in Discernment of Political Misinformation
Empirical research connects the News Finds Me perception (NFM) with undesirable democratic outcomes. Consequently, high-NFM individuals may be more vulnerable to political misinformation than low-NFM individuals. In this two-wave, preregistered news judgment study (N = 867 US adults), we explore the possibility that high-NFM individuals overestimate their ability to detect misinformation-a phenomenon grounded in the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby…
Awesome, Awful: Emotional Flow in Environmental Messaging
Pro-environmental media content, such as nature documentary programming, often features awe-inducing scenes of Earth’s natural beauty, and exposure to this kind of content has been shown to increase persuasive outcomes. Yet environmental messaging is increasingly likely to portray the tragic impacts of human activities on these natural wonders alongside content about Earth’s beauty. How might emotional responses evolve during exposure to sequence…
Leveraging Dynamic Norms to Reduce College Student Alcohol Use: A Test of Four Mediators
Social norms are common in persuasive messaging. For norms trending in a positive direction, it may be beneficial to emphasize change (i.e. dynamic norm) rather than the status quo (i.e. static norm). To test this proposition, we examined college students’ responses to social norm messages encouraging moderate alcohol use. Undergraduates (N = 842) were randomly assigned to view a dynamic norm (“More college students drinking in moderation”), a st…
Meta-Analytic Evidence That Message Fatigue is Associated With Unintended Persuasive Outcomes
Message fatigue is a state in which people believe they have received too many similar messages conveying redundant information and feel a sense of exhaustion and boredom with those messages. A growing body of work suggests message fatigue inhibits persuasion, and a meta-analytic review can help to evaluate the strength and direction of the relationship between message fatigue and persuasive outcomes, explore potential moderators of that relation…
The effects of self-disclosure and gender on a climate scientist’s credibility and likability on social media
To examine whether different types of disclosure made by climate scientists on social media influence perceived source credibility (i.e. competence, integrity, benevolence) and likability, we conducted a 2 (self-disclosure type: personal vs political) × 3 (proportion of posts including a self-disclosure: 20% vs 50% vs 80%) × 2 (gender identity of scientist: male vs female) between-subjects experiment ( N = 734). We found that people liked the sci…
How repeated exposure to persuasive messaging shapes message responses over time: A Longitudinal Experiment
Repeated exposure theories have articulated several processes that explain how message repetition shapes persuasion over time, yet these processes are often studied in isolation. Moreover, repeated exposure theories have largely failed to specify the temporal trajectories of negative message responses over time. Integrating theorizing on repeated exposure, psychological reactance, and message fatigue, we conducted a mixed-design experiment (N = 1…
Being outdoorsy indoors: Nature connectedness through 360-degree images and video
Nature connectedness could be an important motivator for addressing environmental issues via pro-environmental behaviour. While people can connect with nature by spending time outdoors in natural settings, such places are not always accessible. Mediated portrayals of nature offer a promising alternative for connecting with nature. Media that evoke high levels of vividness and spatial presence may be particularly effective. This study uses an onli…
Tuning Out (Political and Science) News? A Selective Exposure Study of the News Finds Me Perception
Individuals harboring perceptions that the “news will find me” (NFM) tend to be less active consuming traditional media, preferring news online and on social media. NFM has also been linked with lower political knowledge and political participation over time. What remains to be seen, however, is whether high-NFM individuals are in fact less likely to expose themselves to news once they do encounter it online. This preregistered study fills this g…
Choose Your Own Emotion: Predictors of Selective Exposure to Emotion-Inducing Climate Messages
The contemporary high-choice media landscape offers users considerable latitude to select media content. When it comes to media messaging about science issues like climate change, it is unclear whether audiences gravitate toward different kinds of emotionally evocative messages and what psychosocial factors underlie those preferences. Here, we presented young adults (N = 1,493) with three climate change videos to choose from (“funny,” “scary,” “i…
Young Adults’ Willingness to Engage in Climate Change Activism: An Application of the Theory of Normative Social Behavior
Guided by the theory of normative social behavior (TNSB), the current survey examined factors associated with climate change activism in a young adult population (N = 627). Consistent with the TNSB, young adults showed greater intention to engage in consumer and conventional climate change activism if they viewed it to be common (descriptive norm) and accepted (injunctive norm) among their peers, if they perceived positive benefits of activism (o…
Efficacy constructs in media use and effects: Organizing and appraising the literature
Efficacy constructs play central roles in health, political, computer-mediated, environmental, and mass communication research. In this review, we sought to organize and evaluate the efficacy concepts that have accumulated in media effects scholarship. First, we characterize how media effects researchers have studied efficacy constructs, both as perceptions and as message features. We discuss key conceptual and methodological issues for each effi…
Will It Teach Them a Lesson? Validating a Measure of Retributive Efficacy in Social Issue Activism
When Home is Not Safe: Media Coverage and Issue Salience of Child Maltreatment during the Covid-19 Pandemic
While staying at home is crucial for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, there is concern that such public health measures may increase the risk for child maltreatment (CM). Using a qualitative content analysis of news coverage and a quantitative survey (N = 250) of media consumers, this study explored the framing of CM as an issue during COVID-19, as well as audience recall and perceived efficacy to prevent maltreatment. Findings from the content…
Emotional Appeals, Climate Change, and Young Adults: A Direct Replication of Skurka et al. (2018)
There is much need to verify the robustness of published findings in the field of communication—particularly regarding the effects of persuasive emotional appeals about social issues. To this end, we present the results from a preregistered, direct replication of C. Skurka, J. Niederdeppe, R. Romero-Canyas, and D. Acup (2018). The original study found that a threat appeal about climate change can increase risk perception and activism intentions a…
All Things Being Equal: Distinguishing Proportionality and Equity in Moral Reasoning
Moral foundations theory (MFT) has been a useful framework for understanding moral judgment and its relationship to political leaning. However, some have argued that MFT omits key domains of moral reasoning. We explored the utility of two candidate foundations (Proportionality and Equity) with a national sample of U.S. adults recruited through Nielsen’s Harris Panel, randomly split into calibration ( n = 1,499) and replication samples ( n = 1,499…
Kimmel on Climate: Disentangling the Emotional Ingredients of a Satirical Monologue
This study explored whether satire (an emotional blend of humor/indignation) can minimize the emotional tradeoffs researchers have documented for humorous appeals about climate change. Using a sample of U.S. young adults, we conducted a 2 (humor: present/absent) × 2 (indignation: present/absent) + 1 (control) experiment in which we manipulated a climate change segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live! Our evidence suggests that it is possible for a late-ni…
Comparing in person and internet methods to recruit low-SES populations for tobacco control policy research
Kimmel on Climate: Disentangling the Emotional Ingredients of a Satirical Monologue
This study explored whether satire (an emotional blend of humor/indignation) can minimize the emotional tradeoffs researchers have documented for humorous appeals about climate change. Using a sample of U.S. young adults, we conducted a 2 (humor: present/absent) × 2 (indignation: present/absent) + 1 (control) experiment in which we manipulated a climate change segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live! Our evidence suggests that it is possible for a late-ni…
Testing competing explanations for graphic warning label effects among adult smokers and non-smoking youth
How repeated exposure to persuasive messaging shapes message responses over time: A Longitudinal Experiment
Repeated exposure theories have articulated several processes that explain how message repetition shapes persuasion over time, yet these processes are often studied in isolation. Moreover, repeated exposure theories have largely failed to specify the temporal trajectories of negative message responses over time. Integrating theorizing on repeated exposure, psychological reactance, and message fatigue, we conducted a mixed-design experiment (N = 1…
Efficacy constructs in media use and effects: Organizing and appraising the literature
Efficacy constructs play central roles in health, political, computer-mediated, environmental, and mass communication research. In this review, we sought to organize and evaluate the efficacy concepts that have accumulated in media effects scholarship. First, we characterize how media effects researchers have studied efficacy constructs, both as perceptions and as message features. We discuss key conceptual and methodological issues for each effi…
News Finds Me as the illusion of competence: Evidence for Overconfidence in Discernment of Political Misinformation
Empirical research connects the News Finds Me perception (NFM) with undesirable democratic outcomes. Consequently, high-NFM individuals may be more vulnerable to political misinformation than low-NFM individuals. In this two-wave, preregistered news judgment study (N = 867 US adults), we explore the possibility that high-NFM individuals overestimate their ability to detect misinformation-a phenomenon grounded in the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby…
Will It Teach Them a Lesson? Validating a Measure of Retributive Efficacy in Social Issue Activism
Market-level exposure to state antismoking media campaigns and public support for tobacco control policy in the United States, 2001–2002
This study shows that that large-scale antismoking media campaigns can have a meaningful secondary impact on support for comprehensive indoor smoking bans. Future research should identify the conditions under which mass media campaigns primarily targeting smoking behaviour may influence public support for a variety of other tobacco control policies
Pathways of Influence in Emotional Appeals: Benefits and Tradeoffs of Using Fear or Humor to Promote Climate Change-Related Intentions and Risk Perceptions
Testing competing explanations for graphic warning label effects among adult smokers and non-smoking youth
Kimmel on Climate: Disentangling the Emotional Ingredients of a Satirical Monologue
This study explored whether satire (an emotional blend of humor/indignation) can minimize the emotional tradeoffs researchers have documented for humorous appeals about climate change. Using a sample of U.S. young adults, we conducted a 2 (humor: present/absent) × 2 (indignation: present/absent) + 1 (control) experiment in which we manipulated a climate change segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live! Our evidence suggests that it is possible for a late-ni…
Comparing in person and internet methods to recruit low-SES populations for tobacco control policy research
All Things Being Equal: Distinguishing Proportionality and Equity in Moral Reasoning
Moral foundations theory (MFT) has been a useful framework for understanding moral judgment and its relationship to political leaning. However, some have argued that MFT omits key domains of moral reasoning. We explored the utility of two candidate foundations (Proportionality and Equity) with a national sample of U.S. adults recruited through Nielsen’s Harris Panel, randomly split into calibration ( n = 1,499) and replication samples ( n = 1,499…
When Home is Not Safe: Media Coverage and Issue Salience of Child Maltreatment during the Covid-19 Pandemic
While staying at home is crucial for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, there is concern that such public health measures may increase the risk for child maltreatment (CM). Using a qualitative content analysis of news coverage and a quantitative survey (N = 250) of media consumers, this study explored the framing of CM as an issue during COVID-19, as well as audience recall and perceived efficacy to prevent maltreatment. Findings from the content…
Emotional Appeals, Climate Change, and Young Adults: A Direct Replication of Skurka et al. (2018)
There is much need to verify the robustness of published findings in the field of communication—particularly regarding the effects of persuasive emotional appeals about social issues. To this end, we present the results from a preregistered, direct replication of C. Skurka, J. Niederdeppe, R. Romero-Canyas, and D. Acup (2018). The original study found that a threat appeal about climate change can increase risk perception and activism intentions a…
Choose Your Own Emotion: Predictors of Selective Exposure to Emotion-Inducing Climate Messages
The contemporary high-choice media landscape offers users considerable latitude to select media content. When it comes to media messaging about science issues like climate change, it is unclear whether audiences gravitate toward different kinds of emotionally evocative messages and what psychosocial factors underlie those preferences. Here, we presented young adults (N = 1,493) with three climate change videos to choose from (“funny,” “scary,” “i…
Young Adults’ Willingness to Engage in Climate Change Activism: An Application of the Theory of Normative Social Behavior
Guided by the theory of normative social behavior (TNSB), the current survey examined factors associated with climate change activism in a young adult population (N = 627). Consistent with the TNSB, young adults showed greater intention to engage in consumer and conventional climate change activism if they viewed it to be common (descriptive norm) and accepted (injunctive norm) among their peers, if they perceived positive benefits of activism (o…
Efficacy constructs in media use and effects: Organizing and appraising the literature
Efficacy constructs play central roles in health, political, computer-mediated, environmental, and mass communication research. In this review, we sought to organize and evaluate the efficacy concepts that have accumulated in media effects scholarship. First, we characterize how media effects researchers have studied efficacy constructs, both as perceptions and as message features. We discuss key conceptual and methodological issues for each effi…
Will It Teach Them a Lesson? Validating a Measure of Retributive Efficacy in Social Issue Activism
Being outdoorsy indoors: Nature connectedness through 360-degree images and video
Nature connectedness could be an important motivator for addressing environmental issues via pro-environmental behaviour. While people can connect with nature by spending time outdoors in natural settings, such places are not always accessible. Mediated portrayals of nature offer a promising alternative for connecting with nature. Media that evoke high levels of vividness and spatial presence may be particularly effective. This study uses an onli…
Tuning Out (Political and Science) News? A Selective Exposure Study of the News Finds Me Perception
Individuals harboring perceptions that the “news will find me” (NFM) tend to be less active consuming traditional media, preferring news online and on social media. NFM has also been linked with lower political knowledge and political participation over time. What remains to be seen, however, is whether high-NFM individuals are in fact less likely to expose themselves to news once they do encounter it online. This preregistered study fills this g…
Awesome, Awful: Emotional Flow in Environmental Messaging
Pro-environmental media content, such as nature documentary programming, often features awe-inducing scenes of Earth’s natural beauty, and exposure to this kind of content has been shown to increase persuasive outcomes. Yet environmental messaging is increasingly likely to portray the tragic impacts of human activities on these natural wonders alongside content about Earth’s beauty. How might emotional responses evolve during exposure to sequence…
Leveraging Dynamic Norms to Reduce College Student Alcohol Use: A Test of Four Mediators
Social norms are common in persuasive messaging. For norms trending in a positive direction, it may be beneficial to emphasize change (i.e. dynamic norm) rather than the status quo (i.e. static norm). To test this proposition, we examined college students’ responses to social norm messages encouraging moderate alcohol use. Undergraduates (N = 842) were randomly assigned to view a dynamic norm (“More college students drinking in moderation”), a st…
Meta-Analytic Evidence That Message Fatigue is Associated With Unintended Persuasive Outcomes
Message fatigue is a state in which people believe they have received too many similar messages conveying redundant information and feel a sense of exhaustion and boredom with those messages. A growing body of work suggests message fatigue inhibits persuasion, and a meta-analytic review can help to evaluate the strength and direction of the relationship between message fatigue and persuasive outcomes, explore potential moderators of that relation…
The effects of self-disclosure and gender on a climate scientist’s credibility and likability on social media
To examine whether different types of disclosure made by climate scientists on social media influence perceived source credibility (i.e. competence, integrity, benevolence) and likability, we conducted a 2 (self-disclosure type: personal vs political) × 3 (proportion of posts including a self-disclosure: 20% vs 50% vs 80%) × 2 (gender identity of scientist: male vs female) between-subjects experiment ( N = 734). We found that people liked the sci…
How repeated exposure to persuasive messaging shapes message responses over time: A Longitudinal Experiment
Repeated exposure theories have articulated several processes that explain how message repetition shapes persuasion over time, yet these processes are often studied in isolation. Moreover, repeated exposure theories have largely failed to specify the temporal trajectories of negative message responses over time. Integrating theorizing on repeated exposure, psychological reactance, and message fatigue, we conducted a mixed-design experiment (N = 1…
Harnessing Anger to Persuade: The Moderating Roles of Retributive Efficacy and Prior Attitudes
Given unresolved questions about the conditions under which anger appeals persuade, this investigation examined whether an anger appeal is more persuasive if it includes efficacy content emphasizing retribution. It also examined whether effects hinge on initial attitudes toward the advocated issue – here, regulation of soda marketing to improve children's health. Findings from this 3 (offense component: high, low, none) × 3 (efficacy component: r…
Who is Willing to Learn About Inequality? Predictors of Choice Exposure to Messaging About Racial Disparities in Air Pollution Effects Among Black and White U.S. Residents
Widespread public awareness is needed to address health disparities and push for effective and equitable solutions. However, in a high choice media environment, this can only be achieved to the extent that people opt to consume disparity messaging. Drawing on theories of selective exposure, the present research uses a pre-registered online study conducted with U.S. adult participants to examine identity-based predictors of choice exposure to a ra…
Green and Good? Examining Intended and Unintended Effects of Morally Framed Climate Messages
Based on Moral Foundations Theory, message framing, and the Sacred Values Protection Model, this pre-registered experiment tested the effects of five different moral frames in climate change messages among N = 715 U.S. adults. Contrary to prior research, we did not find evidence that matching a message’s moral frame to individuals’ endorsements of moral foundations enhances intended positive outcomes, including perceived message effectiveness (PM…
Making Inroads with the Outgroup: The Interactive Effects of Point of View and Group Membership in Period Poverty Narratives
Over one billion people experience the threats that period poverty (lack of access to menstrual products) poses to their well-being. Public health advocates have used storytelling as a communication strategy to raise awareness and motivate behaviors that help address this issue. In an experiment with 1467 U.S. adults, we investigated the effects of period poverty narratives among individuals with different gender identities. Given a story can be …
How Forced Versus Selective Exposure Matters for the Influence of Emotional Appeals About Climate Change in a Sample of Americans
Researchers studying the influence of strategic science messages have overlooked the fact that people are selective in the content they consume. In this experiment, participants were “forced” to view one of three climate appeals (threat, humor, informational), reflecting the typical between-subjects experiment, or they were permitted to choose between one of these appeals (or topical alternatives), reflecting real-world media choice. Compared wit…
News Finds Me as the illusion of competence: Evidence for Overconfidence in Discernment of Political Misinformation
Empirical research connects the News Finds Me perception (NFM) with undesirable democratic outcomes. Consequently, high-NFM individuals may be more vulnerable to political misinformation than low-NFM individuals. In this two-wave, preregistered news judgment study (N = 867 US adults), we explore the possibility that high-NFM individuals overestimate their ability to detect misinformation-a phenomenon grounded in the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby…
Psychology (25 works) · Social Psychology (20 works) · Political science (14 works) · Media Influence and Health (12 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (11 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Medicine (8 works) · Perception (7 works)