It's tough being a science communicator or researcher who communicates science.

There are two schools of thought about how communicators should present themselves.

One says they should always be professional. Being professional shows the researcher/communicator is competent and expert - someone you can trust. In other words, researchers and communicators should stick to the science.

The other says communicators/researchers should strive to be friendly, relatable, and approachable. This, the argument goes, is the way to build trust. In other words, communicators and researchers should share science AND share some personal insights.

So, which is right? Dr Marlene Sophie Altenmüller (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) and colleagues asked that exact question with an experiment. You know what they found?

👍 Self-disclosure (sharing personal insights, titbits, and so on) didn't change people's perception of the credibility of any research being discussed.

🤝 People felt ever-so-slightly closer to those who self-disclosed vs those who didn't.

👎 People thought those who self-disclosed had slightly less expertise than those who didn't.

All in, they say that "self-disclosure in science communication has measurable, yet small ⎯ and, likely, practically irrelevant effects: The meta-analysis shows evidence of small positive effects on laypeople’s closeness towards self-disclosing researchers and on their affective trustworthiness ascriptions."

In other words, don't stress too much about self-disclosing.

If you want to, go ahead. If you don't, well, don't!

Curious to know more?

If you have access to the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, head here 👇
Altenmüller, M. S., Kampschulte, L., Verbeek, L., & Gollwitzer, M. (2023). Science communication gets personal: Ambivalent effects of self-disclosure in science communication on trust in science. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 29(4), 793–812. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000489

If you don't have access to the Journal, head here for the pre-print version (no nice formatting) 👇
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/x54ta