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Sometimes things that feel risky are actually pretty safe, and things that feel safe can actually be pretty risky. We study how people perceive risk and use information to inform these risk perceptions. We then take what we learn to identify effective risk communication strategies. We currently are working on an NIH/NCI-funded cooperative agreement to understand the best strategies for messaging about the tobacco product continuum of risk.

We have conducted numerous studies examining the content and effects of tobacco marketing. Our current work focuses on oral nicotine products via an NIH/NIDA-funded R01 project that monitors oral nicotine product advertising tactics and conducts perceptual and behavioral studies to assess advertising effects. Prior work has focused on youth appealing claims in cigarette and e-cigarette ads, and explored how the tobacco industry uses greenwashing which can mislead consumers about product harm.

An increasing number of states have legal cannabis markets, and with this comes numerous new ways that companies are marketing and labelling their cannabis products. We want to understand what cannabis companies are doing, and how these marketing and labelling practices affect consumers. We are currently working on an NIH/NIDA-funded R01 project that documents and tests the effects of cannabis marketing and labeling practices on consumer use expectancies and subjective and objective outcomes of use.

We are interested in all things health communication! Our work has characterized how vaccine misinformation lures people in; how young people's identity as a member of a peer crowd or subculture connects to their risk behavior; and how psychophysiological indicators and neuroimaging can be used to support self-reported measures of message response. We've also collaborated on work to understand why people engage with misinformation online, best practices for food date labels, how stories can be used to effectively convey health information, and identifying factors driving parents' HPV vaccine hesitancy, among other topics.