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Understanding the role that cognitive heuristics play in how people make sense of scientific information can help public health communicators tailor their messages to the reasoning strategies of the public. In this research project, we interviewed 27 Canadians to find out what heuristic cues they are using to make sense of changes to pandemic-related science about masks and vaccines.

We found that people are very dependent upon expectancy heuristics when making sense of new information about masks and vaccines. This means that whether or not someone expects scientific information to change over time, strongly affects whether or not they are willing to accept new scientific information.

Based on these findings, we make two recommendations:
1. Public health communicators should emphasize that science is constantly evolving, to set the expectation that the best information could change in the future.
2. When changes do occur, public health communicators should acknowledge these updates, rather than simply replacing old information with new information.

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