Adam Richards

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Furman University

Forgiveness is an important component of many of the world’s religions that also has benefits for individuals’ health and relationships. Research on the health benefits of forgiveness is couched predominately in the stress and coping framework, which views forgiveness as buffering the stress associated with unforgiving feelings. This exploratory st...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some US states mandated vaccination for certain citizens. We used state-level data from the CDC to test whether vaccine mandates predicted changes in COVID-19 vaccine uptake, as well as related voluntary behaviors involving COVID-19 boosters and seasonal influenza vaccines. Results showed that COVID-19 vaccine adoption...

Despite the common use of social media to discuss health issues, little is known about how features of user-generated content influence users’ health outcomes. To address this gap, we longitudinally studied large-scale conversations on the subreddit r/loseit, an online weight loss community, by computationally analyzing the themes and sentiment of...

This research investigated the predictors of satisfaction for parents of pediatric patients after a clinical consultation. Specifically, we assessed whether perceptions of their provider's communication quality influenced the degree to which their (dis)satisfaction with consultation length associated with their provider rating and intent to recomme...

Three experiments tested if the machine and bandwagon heuristics moderate beliefs in fact-checked claims under different conditions of human/machine (dis)agreement and of transparency of the fact-checking system. Across experiments, people were more likely to align their belief in the claim when artificial intelligence (AI) and crowdsourcing agents...

Peru has one of the major shark fisheries in the world. Moreover, shark meat consumption is popular and the main commercially exploited species are considered threatened. Recent studies have found high mislabeling rates and high concentrations of methylmercury in shark meat. The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of different fra...

This research assessed whether the color of a female politician’s clothing affected perceptions of her verbal aggression. In the context of Kamala Harris attacking Donald Trump, a 2 (color: pink vs. gray) × 2 (verbal aggression: low vs. high) experiment was conducted. While wearing pink, participants perceived Harris as more competent and reported...

This experiment assessed how the frame of promotional vaccine messages elicited psychological reactance differently for African American parents according to their level of perceived vaccine efficacy. We found that those with low perceived HPV vaccine efficacy experienced more psychological reactance in response to loss-framed messages compared to...

This study assessed the relative effects of reactance mitigation strategies specifically designed to prevent or restore threatened autonomy according to message recipients’ levels of reactance proneness. An experiment (N = 230) using a 2 (inoculation mitigation: present vs. absent) × 2 (freedom threatening language: high vs. low) × 2 (restoration p...

Course Communication Research Methods. Objectives This activity provides students with an experiential introduction to measurement theory and the methods for assessing measurement reliability. First, multiple measurements of a person’s height are interpreted according to classical test theory. Second, the measurement of human height is used as an...

This study compared the relative efficacy of two strategies designed to mitigate psychological reactance in health campaigns by using reminders of behavioral autonomy: preemptive scripts, which appear before the appeal, and restoration postscripts, which appear after. Employing a mixed-model experiment with a 2 (threat to freedom: low vs. high) × 3...

This chapter examines clinical communication skills training in relation to the Compassion Crossroads in healthcare—the intersection in which genuine intent from healthcare providers to alleviate the suffering of ill people by communicating compassionately is often thwarted by outside influences including health systems. Chapter components are inte...

Tremendous growth in the communication discipline during the past century has raised fundamental questions about what it means to study human communication. This project reports an attempt at answering such questions by exploring the themes that animate communication scholarship over time and across journals sponsored by different scholarly organiz...

Tremendous growth in the communication discipline during the past century has raised fundamental questions about what it means to study human communication. This project reports an attempt at answering such questions by exploring the themes that animate communication scholarship over time and across journals sponsored by different scholarly organiz...

This study examined the ability of metacognitive inoculation to confer resistance to sarcastic persuasive messages. We expected that sarcasm in an attack message would be more persuasive for inoculation and control treatments compared to an inoculation containing a forewarning of sarcasm’s psychological function. A 3 (inoculation: traditional, meta...

This study investigated whether color cues in health PSAs affect people’s experience of psychological reactance to health recommendations. By integrating psychological reactance theory and color-in-context theory, we predicted that reactance would be greater after viewing a threatening health PSA conveyed in red compared to other colors. Using a 3...

In order to better understand the state, evolution, and impact of titling practices in the field of communication, we examine the prevalence of stylistic cues in journal article titles and whether such cues predict subsequent citations. We employed a stratified random sample of articles published in 22 communication journals between 1970 and 2010 (...

The anger activism model proposes that efficacy moderates the effect of anger on message processing and persuasion. This study tested the model’s predictions using a 2 (efficacy) × 2 (anger) × 2 (argument quality) experiment (N = 267) in the context of student protests. We found that when anger was high, people processed higher quality arguments mo...

This experiment assessed whether instructor credibility (low or high) moderated the effects of grade incentives (rewards or punishment) and advantage framing (gain or loss) of technology policies on students’ intent to comply and motivation to learn. Results indicate that credibility increased motivation to learn. Significant moderated moderated me...

This research examines how and why trust in health information from medical authorities (i.e., doctors or health care professionals and government health agencies) predicts acceptance of the HPV vaccine for one’s child among African American parents. A survey of African American parents recruited from community venues revealed that low trust in hea...

This investigation assessed how a threatening inoculation forewarning about psychological reactance affected message targets’ derogation of a subsequent health appeal. A two-mediator model showed that apprehensive threat—the traditional operationalization of inoculation’s psychological function based on fear arousal—and motivational threat—an alter...

Is parents’ support for mandating human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination for their adolescent children influenced by how the policy advocacy message is framed? In this research, we conducted an experiment in which a group of African-American parents were exposed to messages advocating HPV vaccination mandates that were framed in either gains or los...

Taking conflict personally (TCP), the degree to which people experience negative consequences from conflict, is typically conceived as a state or trait. This investigation went beyond TCP as an individual characteristic in identifying differences in TCP based on the type of relationship in which conflict is situated. Participants were surveyed abou...

This study investigated how the color of written communication influences interpersonal attributions. An experiment was conducted whereby students read a peer’s graded essay that varied according to the color of the ink used by the instructor. Feedback in red, compared with green or black, generally elicited more negative perceptions. Students read...

This study questions the traditional conceptualization of the threat component of inoculation and compares it to an alternative operationalization that was hypothesized to better capture the psychological function of threat according to inoculation theory, focusing less on an apprehensive response in favor of how inoculation treatments cognitively...

This manuscript examines argument engagement in close relationships (friendships and romantic relationships). Two pilot studies were conducted to identify what factors naïve actors report matter to them when considering whether to engage in an interpersonal argument, and to develop and pre-test measurement scales for these factors. The main study e...

This research examines the interaction effect of message framing (gain vs. loss) and perceived susceptibility (i.e., perceived likelihood that one's child is at risk of contracting HPV) on African American parents' intentions to vaccinate their children against HPV. Results of an experiment (N = 193) in which parents were exposed to either a gain-f...

This study examined how anger expression tendencies moderate the negative consequences of state reactance. An experiment was conducted whereby participants (N = 226) read a health public service announcement (PSA) that encouraged conversations about sexual health history prior to sexual encounters with new partners and that varied in freedom-threat...

This study examined the combined effect of character and policy coverage about a political candidate in news media on voters’ evaluations and thoughts about the candidate. A 2 (issue coverage: present/absent) × 2 (image coverage: present/absent) between-subject factorial experiment was conducted whereby participants (N = 134) read a version of an e...

This investigation examined the process by which people decide to disclose secrets. Two competing models tested the order that people consider outcome expectancies and efficacy assessments when making disclosure decisions. Participants (N = 349) answered questions about a currently held secret and related cognitions. Two months later, people indica...

This research examined the efficacy of inoculation as a strategy to mitigate psychological reactance based on the level of threat communicated in the forewarning and subsequent persuasive health appeal. Two 2 (inoculation) × 2 (freedom-threatening language) experiments were conducted. The first (N = 181) used elaborated inoculation designed to enha...

This research examined how the interaction between a source's facial similarity to message targets and communicated bias affects audience persuadability. We used an evolutionary explanation to hypothesize that biased sources would elicit less favorable attitudes than unbiased sources for dissimilar sources, but that this difference would be absent...

This research examines the influence of evidence type (statistical, narrative, or hybrid) and narrative type (first-person or third-person) on risk perception about human papillomavirus (HPV) and behavioral intention to get the HPV vaccine. In total, 174 college students who had not received the HPV vaccine participated in a controlled experiment....

This investigation examined the possibility of decreasing psychological reactance to health campaigns through the use of inoculation messages. It was hypothesized that an inoculation message, which forewarned of the potential of subsequent reactance, would decrease participants' likelihood of reacting negatively to a freedom-threatening message aim...

Serial argument theory explains recurring conflict within personal relationships. The theory specifies that an arguer’s goals influence his/her tactics, leading to argument outcomes which include effects on the relationship. We extend this model in two ways. First we suggest that attachment styles predict serial argument goals. Second, we hypothesi...

This investigation considers the factors that predict the intent to engage in interpersonal arguments. By adapting the argument engagement model (Hample, Paglieri, and Na 2012), a subjective expected utility model was tested to determine the effects of (1) evaluative assessments, in addition to probabilistic assessments, and (2) probabilistic asses...

This investigation utilized the integrative model of behavioral prediction to assess the Montana Meth Project (MMP) campaign by testing theoretical antecedents of attitude toward methamphetamine (meth) use. College students in Montana (N = 403) were surveyed about their exposure to MMP ads and communication about meth in conversation. Structural eq...

This research considers how mental dialogues (or imagined interactions [IIs]) about personal secrets predict the maintenance of secrecy and associated levels of mental and physical well-being. Participants described secrets they were keeping and completed questionnaires assessing IIs about the secret. After 2 months, participants reported whether t...

This research considers how observed tactics and patterns in parent-adolescent conflict relate to family orientations toward communication. Fifty families (mother, father, and mid-adolescent child) discussed family changes desired by each person. In high versus low conformity families, parents (fathers especially) pressured more, were more confront...

In the 1970s, Hample developed a successful model of intrapersonal argument. Loosely based on the law of total probability, the model used a normatively correct standard to predict people’s adherence to persuasive claims. That original research used single-item measures that could not be assessed for internal consistency. The present study estimate...

Blurting is production of speech that is spontaneous, unedited, and negative in its repercussions. Study 1 (N = 230) analyzed open-ended descriptions of situations in which respondents had blurted and situations in which they had been tempted to blurt but stopped themselves. Coding of those materials supported our essential understanding of blurtin...

Varying perspectives exist regarding the implications of genetic susceptibility testing for common disease, with some anticipating adverse effects and others expecting positive outcomes; however, little is known about the characteristics of people who are most likely to be interested in direct-to-consumer genetic testing. To that end, this study ex...

This case study of the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland demonstrates the need to consider course sequencing in the communication curriculum. The investigation assessed whether the order in which undergraduates took courses predicted grade performance. Students' (N = 6,166) grade data from earlier courses were used to predic...

This investigation tests Honeycutt's (200311. Honeycutt , J. M. ( 2003 ). Imagined interactions: Daydreaming about communication . Cresskill , NJ : Hampton . View all references) conflict linkage theory in the context of serial arguing. Reports on the characteristics of imagined interactions were obtained before, after, and between two episodes of...