Haoran Chu

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Assistant Professor at University of Florida

Construal level theory of psychological distance suggests that people are likely to pay more attention to contextual cues when appraising proximal, rather than distant stimuli. We tested the theory in the climate change context by examining if framing climate change impacts in a psychologically close way may motivate the American public to support...

Construal‐level theory suggests that high‐level abstract features weigh more in people's decision‐making at farther distance, while low‐level concrete features weigh more at closer distance. Based on this, we propose that psychological distance will influence the effect of risk versus efficacy framing on climate change engagement. In particular, ri...

Applying the solution aversion model in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine how ideology and support for free markets influence Americans’ assessment of COVID-19 risks and support for mitigation policies. Results from an experiment ( N = 438) indicate that conservatives are more likely to dismiss the risks of COVID-19 when governmental...

Objective Integrating constructs from three prominent health behavior theories including the extended parallel process model, the health belief model, and the theory of planned behavior, this study seeks to identify sociopsychological factors that influenced American’s intention to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Method An online survey was delivered...

Rationale Countries worldwide rely on the COVID-19 vaccine to contain the spread of the pandemic. However, because of the inequality in distribution, people in many demographic groups and regions still do not have access to a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine. Objective To aid vaccine promotion campaigns that target populations with different ac...

The 1.5 °C global temperature increase target necessitates the transition to net zero emission in various sectors to mitigate the potential threat of global climate change. Net zero may be achieved through diverse means, but stakeholders tend to favor direct emission cuts over offsetting through carbon credit purchases. However, it is unclear what...

This study builds on person perception and human AI interaction (HAII) theories to investigate how content and source cues, specifically race, ethnicity, and nationality, affect judgments of AI-generated content in a high-stakes self-presentation context: college applications. Results of a pre-registered experiment with a nationally representative...

Storytelling is a human universal. The ubiquity of stories and the rapid development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) pose important questions: can AI like ChatGPT tell engaging and persuasive stories? If so, what makes a narrative engaging and persuasive? Three pre-registered experiments comparing human-generated narratives from existing research a...

Objective: This study seeks to comparatively examine parents' intention to vaccinate their children for three infectious diseases, including COVID-19, HPV, and monkeypox. Methods: Utilizing a mixed-design survey and multilevel structural equation models, we investigated if perception of the diseases and vaccines explained the variance in parents...

The current study aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of threat and efficacy appraisal and account for the influence of disparity in the accessibility to risk prevention resources in predicting attitudes and behaviors. We propose a Risk-Efficacy Framework by integrating theories, including the extended parallel process model, health belief...

Storytelling is a human universal, but can Artificial Intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT tell a good story? Based on three pre-registered experiments, we investigated if narratives generated by ChatGPT or human lead to different levels of transportation, counterarguing, psychological reactance, self-referencing, and story-consistent attitudes, beliefs,...

With the unceasing advancement of novel digital technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to change and challenge established social dynamics. As such, a deeper understanding of AI and its impacts will prove to be crucial in an AI-enriched world. In the current study, we focus on an emerging AI-based technology, deepfakes, and investi...

Climate change has been increasingly discussed in moral terms in public discourse. Despite the growing body of research on the effectiveness of moral frames in bridging the ideological divide, few studies have examined the role that perceived credibility, an important element of any persuasive appeal, plays in facilitating the framing effect. With...

This study examines the influences of distance cues and individual characteristics, including trait empathy, time orientation, age, and gender, on people’s construal of climate change. A content analysis was utilized to investigate American adults’ mental construal of climate change after exposure to messages illustrating its impacts in close or di...

Objectives This study aims to investigate how trust in healthcare providers, public health agencies, politicians, and pharmaceutical companies shaped people’s attitudes and behavioral intention associated with COVID-19 vaccination, directly and indirectly via the mediation of vaccine evaluation and emotions. Methods A two-wave longitudinal survey...

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to inflict damage throughout the world, some minority groups are bearing a disproportionate share of its impacts. We concentrated on one such group, U.S.-dwelling Chinese, who have had to cope with challenges related to acculturation, health, safety, and racism. Recognizing that health information seeking was an e...

As the coronavirus spreads across the globe, xenophobia and racism against Chinese and Asians at large are also surging. In a two-wave survey, we focused on U.S.-dwelling Chinese (N = 1,256), a minority group that was targeted by racial discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated the relationships among a number of media and percep...

The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked hostility against Chinese immigrants and sojourners in the U.S. and other countries. Making the situation worse, strong resentment against this group has also emerged in China due to the fear of returnees spreading the disease. Integrating research on acculturation and hostile media perception, we examined how such...

Based on data collected from a representative sample of American adults, this study explores social cognitive variables that motivate Americans to validate rumors about Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma on social media. Results indicate that risk perception and negative emotions are positively related to systematic processing of relevant risk inf...

Objective This study explored the effects of COVID-19 vaccine promotion messages highlighting the benefit at individual, community, and country levels. Based on the cultural theory of risks, we investigated how individuals’ valuation of individualism vs. communitarianism and hierarchical vs. egalitarian social structure affect their responses to va...

As an unprecedented global disease outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic is also accompanied by an infodemic. To better cope with the pandemic, laypeople need to process information in ways that help guide informed judgments and decisions. Such information processing likely involves the reliance on various evidence types. Extending the Risk Information S...

Ethnic and racial minority communities often suffer more from disasters due to a lack of access to resources from governmental agencies and other organizations that provide disaster relief. To explore the role of social media in addressing this problem, this study investigates whether a popular social messaging application among the Chinese immigra...

This study examined the influences of perceived distance to communicator on the effects of aggressive style (i.e. personal attacks and intense languages) in communicating scientific issues such as COVID-19 to the public. With a multi-site experiment ( N = 464), we found that aggression led to a heightened violation of expected social norm regarding...

Wide uptake of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines is key to containing the ongoing pandemic. Integrating constructs from three prominent health behavior theories (HBT) including the extended parallel process model (EPPM), the health belief model (HBM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the current study seeks to identify sociopsych...

Climate change poses severe economic and public health threats to societies around the world. However, little is known about how selectively emphasizing its impacts on different issues and in different locations influence public engagement in climate change mitigation. Utilizing an experimental survey with adult participants, this study investigate...

This study examines the use of narrative persuasion in promoting human papillomavirus vaccination. Compared to non-narrative message, the narrative message increased perceived severity of human papillomavirus, which influenced vaccination intention through heightened fear. The narrative message also dampened hope and subsequently decreased vaccinat...

Anchored by construal level theory and appraisal theories of emotion, this study examines whether discrete emotions vary along with perceived psychological distance of climate change impacts. We found that reduced psychological distance perception led to an increase in concrete emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, and guilt. In contrast, increase...

Research on disaster resilience has increasingly focused on the role of social capital and online social networks in disaster recovery. This study complements this field of research by investigating three under addressed issues. First, we analyzed how a social messaging application, WeChat, helped individuals access and mobilize bonding, bridging a...

This study focuses on motivators of information processing during the 2016 U.S. presidential election cycle in relation to two specific topics—the election itself and the issue of climate change. We conducted two national surveys based on the risk information seeking and processing model (RISP) in October 2016, about a month before Election Day. Re...

Unlike the United States, where human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines have been available for decades, China recently approved its first HPV vaccines. Setting up a baseline comparison between these two countries, this study examines the influence of message framing, motivational orientation, cultural worldview, knowledge, and gender on young adults'...

Objective: This study aims to examine the impacts of gain vs. loss-framed messages and narrative messages on Chinese women's intentions to get HPV vaccines for their children. Methods: A survey experiment was conducted among Chinese females (N = 453) assessing their responses to 3 types of messages (i.e. gain-framed, loss-framed and narrative) d...

Character morality is an integral variable within disposition theories. Zillmann proposed that moral judgments of characters result from a viewer monitoring and approving/disapproving of a character’s behaviors. Raney proposed a schema-based theoretical expansion of this model, wherein moral judgments of characters and disposition formation—facilit...

Common wisdom holds that graphic media violence leads to antisocial outcomes. This common wisdom is reflected in the Society for Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. However, theory and research regarding moral emotions’ ability to increase moral sensitivity suggests that this type of negative content may be capable of yielding prosocial respo...

This 3-study paper examines the role of character-schema activation in the process of disposition formation. Studies 1 and 2 replicate initial studies (AUTHOR)—in which we were able to activate heroic and villainous perceptions of characters based purely on appearance—and extend this research to examine the potential that heroic schema is more diff...

Despite the heated debate about how news media should handle graphic images of violence, few empirical studies have been conducted to test the responses to viewing such images. An initial study, (Author et al, 2015) showed that graphic media violence can serve as a moral motivator. The current study attempted to replicate these findings and further...

The appraisal tendency framework (ATF) suggests that discrete emotions mediate the relationship between cognitive appraisals and behaviors. Based on the ATF, this study analyzed and found that fear, anger, anxiety, disgust, and sadness were positively related to the US public’s risk perception about the Ebola outbreak. Fear was also found to inhibi...