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In the early stage of a novel public health crisis, such as an infectious disease, there is often uncertainty about whether the crisis will be permanent. We find that emphasizing the potential permanency of the situation surrounding the crisis can backfire, depending on the implicit self-theory held by people. Data collected during the COVID-19 outbreak showed that when the crisis situation was communicated as potentially being permanent in nature, entity theorists, who view personal qualities as fixed, were more reluctant to adjust to it than incremental theorists, who view personal qualities as malleable. The results were consistent whether implicit self-theory was measured as an individual difference factor (study 1) or manipulated (study 2). We reason that entity and incremental theorists make different inferences about what is required to adjust under the potentially permanent crisis situation: Entity theorists tend to infer that it involves substantial change in the self, whereas incremental theorists tend to infer that it involves crisis-specific behavioral changes. Importantly, we find that communicating ambiguity by leaving open the possibility of two opposing outcomes – the crisis situation may be permanent or temporary – effectively increases entity theorists’ intentions to adjust by encouraging them to infer that adjusting to the crisis involves crisis-specific behavioral changes (study 2).

health communication

Promoting the Ambiguity of a Public Health Crisis Can Facilitate Adjustment: The Joint Influence of an Ambiguous Message Focus and Implicit Self-Theories