Poll: Trust in CDC has fallen dramatically in the last year

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

 

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Boston, MA—A year after changes to federal leadership in the U.S. public health system, a new poll finds that trust in public health agencies has dropped dramatically. Only 50% of U.S. adults say they trust health recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared to 77% in spring 2025. The fraction who say they trust their state health department has declined from 80% to 66% and the fraction who say they trust their local public health department has fallen from 82% to 70%.

The poll, One Year In: Public Views of a Changing Public Health Landscape, was conducted by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation’s Public Health Listening Lab from March 19 to April 1, 2026, among a probability-based, nationally representative sample of 2,205 U.S. adults ages 18+. The poll was supported by the de Beaumont Foundation.

Trust in public health agencies takes a tumble

Trust in CDC health recommendations remained relatively stable in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but has fallen precipitously in the last year. Trust hovered around 75% from 2022 to 2025; a year into new federal leadership, it declined to 50%. The fraction of the public saying they trust CDC health recommendations includes about a third (38%) who say they trust them “somewhat” and a small share (12%) who say they trust them “a great deal.”

This decline in trust is driven by deep partisan divides. From 2025 to 2026, trust in CDC health recommendations has fallen from 92% to 34% among Democrats and from 77% to 47% among Independents. This steep drop also translates to losses in trust across demographic groups. Trust in the CDC has fallen more than 30 percentage points among women (80% to 48%); Black and Hispanic adults (77% to 43% and 81% to 50% respectively); those living in urban areas (80% to 48%); and those with a college degree (80% to 46%). Meanwhile, trust among Republicans has increased very slightly, from 63% to 67%.

“The link between political affiliation and trust in public health institutions is worrisome and doesn’t bode well for the future,” said Brian C. Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation. “Decision makers can and will have differing views on the best policy solutions to public health challenges, but it’s important for them to be grounded in a common set of facts. Science should not be a point of view. Once facts are politicized, it becomes increasingly difficult to bridge the divide.”

Trust in state and local public health agencies has also fallen in the last year, but not as dramatically. Between 2025 and 2026, trust in state public health agencies dropped from 80% to 66%, while trust in local public health agencies dropped from 82% to 70%. State and local health departments are now substantially more trusted than federal agencies such as the CDC (50%) or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (53%).

Approval of federal public health agencies’ actions falls along party lines

A slim majority (55%) of the U.S. public disapproves of federal public health agencies’ actions in the past year, with disapproval strongly linked to partisan identity. Most Democrats (86%) disapprove, but only one in five Republicans (20%) say the same.

Top concerns about federal health agencies’ actions under new leadership include wide agreement from the public that their recommendations were too influenced by leaders’ personal beliefs (68%) or focused too much on the wrong priorities (66%). About six in ten agree that agencies have cut or scaled back programs too much (61%), made too many decisions without following standard processes (60%), and cut or scaled back government funding for health or medical research too much (60%).

There is less public agreement with neutral and positive statements regarding federal health agencies’ actions. Less than half agree that agencies have put decisions back in the hands of families (46%) or have been trying to do the right thing (44%). Only about a third agree that federal health agencies have made recommendations that follow the best available scientific evidence (38%), have had a positive impact on the health of average Americans (37%), or have represented the interests of people like them (35%).

Support for childhood vaccination remains strong across party lines, but may be softening

A year into new federal public health leadership, there is still strong majority support for routine childhood vaccination requirements. More than three-quarters (77%) of the public say that parents should be required to vaccinate their children in order to attend school, which has been nearly the same since the COVID-19 pandemic (range of 74% to 79% between 2021 and 2025). Though there are differences in vaccine support by political party, notable majorities of both parties – 91% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans – say that parents should be required to vaccinate their children in order to attend school.

Nonetheless, there are some indications that vaccine support may be softening. While a majority of U.S. adults (58%) oppose reducing the childhood vaccine schedule, which forms the basis of childhood vaccine requirements, there is substantial minority support (42%) for this policy change. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans (65%) support reducing the childhood vaccine schedule, compared to fewer than one in five Democrats (18%).  

Another indication of possible softening vaccine support comes from a slight dip in the fraction of people saying that childhood vaccines are safe. Overall views on childhood vaccine safety are high at 89%, but have declined slightly from 94% during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (2021–2022). This overall decline includes a decrease in the fraction of the public saying childhood vaccines are “very safe,” which now stands at 57%, down from a high of 70% during the peak of COVID-19. Strong shares of adults in both parties say vaccines are safe overall, with 85% of Republicans and 96% of Democrats saying childhood vaccines are “very safe” or “somewhat safe,” but there is a wide gap in the subset saying vaccines are “very safe” (46% of Republicans versus 76% of Democrats).  

“Social media and news coverage tend to elevate the loudest voices that question or outright oppose vaccines, so it can often feel like there is a rise in anti-vaccine sentiment amongst the general public. The reality is that the vast majority of people support vaccines for children and believe they are safe,” said Gillian K. SteelFisher, survey lead and principal research scientist at Harvard Chan School. “That said, it is true that many families are questioning the necessity of vaccines and weighing what vaccine requirements mean for their parental authority. Healthcare providers and public health communicators need to be able to address these concerns with empathy and compassion.” 

Strong support for changes to the food pyramid, but partisan patterns persist at a high level

A majority of the public (60%) supports the recent changes to the food pyramid and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and even stronger majorities support specific measures, including recommendations to avoid or sharply limit sugar and highly-processed food (90%) and recommendations to increase protein intake (85%). A smaller majority (62%) supports recommendations to increase beef and whole milk consumption.

Support is bipartisan for limiting sugar and highly-processed food (Republicans: 94%, Democrats: 89%) and for increasing protein intake (Republicans: 92%, Democrats: 79%). But there is partisan division when considering support for overall changes: 83% of Republicans say they support changes to the food pyramid, compared to only 37% of Democrats. Support for recommendations to increase beef and whole milk consumption is also divided, with 80% support among Republicans and 44% support among Democrats.

See the poll report for full findings and topline.

Methodology

Results are based on survey research conducted by the Harvard Opinion Research Program (HORP) based at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in partnership with the de Beaumont Foundation. Representatives from these organizations developed the survey questionnaire, while analyses were conducted by researchers from Harvard Chan School and the fielding team at SSRS of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. 

The HORP project team included Gillian SteelFisher, director of HORP and principal research scientist at Harvard Chan School, and Mary Findling, managing director of HORP.

The de Beaumont Foundation project team included Brian C. Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, Emma Prus, senior program and research associate, and Nalini Padmanabhan, communications director.

Interviews were conducted with a representative sample of 2,205 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish online and by telephone. Respondents were reached online and by phone through the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative, probability-based panel. Panelists were randomly recruited via an Address Based Sampling frame and from random-digit dial samples on SSRS surveys. Most panelists completed the survey online with a small subset who do not access the internet completing by phone. The interview period was March 19 to April 1, 2026.

Findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the de Beaumont Foundation or Harvard Chan School. When interpreting findings, one should recognize that all surveys are subject to sampling error. Results may differ from what would be obtained if the whole U.S. adult population had been interviewed. The margin of error at the 95% confidence interval is +2.0 percentage points.

Republicans include adults who lean Republican, Democrats include adults who lean Democrat, and Independents include adults who identify as “other” or are unaffiliated. Trend data in this poll is compared to the following prior polls of U.S. adults ages 18 and older: 2025 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health/de Beaumont Foundation (n=3,343); 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023 polls of U.S. adults ages 18 and older, conducted by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health/Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO)/National Public Health Information Coalition (NPHIC) (Nov 2023 n=1632; July 2023 n=1430; Nov 2022 n=1,813; Feb 2022 n=4208; 2021 n=2,500; 2019 n=1,550). Possible sources of non-sampling error include non-response bias, as well as question wording and ordering effects. Non-response in web and telephone surveys produces some known biases in survey-derived estimates because participation tends to vary for different subgroups of the population. To compensate for these known biases and for variations in the probability of selection within and across households, sample data are weighted in a multi-step process by probability of selection and recruitment, response rates by survey type, and demographic variables (gender, age, education, race/ethnicity, region, the frequency of internet use, civic engagement, population density, registered voter, party ID, religious affiliation, number of adults in household, and home tenure) to reflect the true population of adults in the U.S. Other techniques, including random sampling, multiple contact attempts, replicate subsamples, and systematic respondent selection within households, are used to ensure that the sample is representative.

Visit the Harvard Chan School website for the latest news and events from our Studio.

For more information:

Maya Brownstein
mbrownstein@hsph.harvard.edu

Nalini Padmanabhan
media@debeaumont.org

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Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is a community of innovative scientists, practitioners, educators, and students dedicated to improving health and advancing equity so all people can thrive. We research the many factors influencing health and collaborate widely to translate those insights into policies, programs, and practices that prevent disease and promote well-being for people around the world. We also educate thousands of public health leaders a year through our degree programs, postdoctoral training, fellowships, and continuing education courses. Founded in 1913 as America’s first professional training program in public health, the School continues to have an extraordinary impact in fields ranging from infectious disease to environmental justice to health systems and beyond.

The de Beaumont Foundation creates and invests in bold solutions that improve the health of communities across the country. Its mission is to advance policy, build partnerships, and strengthen public health to create communities where everyone can achieve their best possible health. For more information, visit www.debeaumont.org.

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Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

One Year In: Public Views of a Changing Public Health Landscape

Article Publication Date

9-Jun-2026

 

Internet searches for leucovorin, folate, and acetaminophen after a White House autism announcement

JAMA Network OpenFacebook

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About The Study: 

During a press conference on September 22, 2025, President Trump and top health officials endorsed use of leucovorin, a generic drug formulated from folinic acid, for treatment of autism, and urged against acetaminophen use during pregnancy, stating concerns about its risk for development of autism in children. The White House announcement was associated with large increases in internet searches over the subsequent 2 weeks, including more than 1 million additional searches for leucovorin; nearly 81,000 additional purchasing interest searches for leucovorin, folinic acid, or folate; and more than 4 million additional searches for acetaminophen with pregnancy or autism.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Joseph S. Ross, MD, MHS, email joseph.ross@yale.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.17910)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

 

New framework to model critical infrastructure resilience

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

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The ten-step framework for resilience quantification elaborated by dr Ardebili

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Credit: Alì Aghazadeh Ardebili

Critical infrastructures (CIs) integrate physical assets and systems, providing key services to society. CIs are influenced by constant changes in technology, external threats, and operational contexts where human operators and end-users play a fundamental role. CIs can therefore be conceptualised as cyber-physical-social systems (CPSSs). The capacity of CIs to withstand or to recover quickly from impactful events is called resilience.

In a study published in the Journal of Safety Science and Resilience, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Salento and the University of Trieste (Italy) addresses a well-documented gap in the literature on CIs: the absence of standardised metrics for measuring resilience, particularly when such infrastructures are integrated with AI.

Principal investigator Alì Aghazadeh Ardebili explains, "Our systematic literature review yielded a first set of R-KPIs, categorised into specific theoretical foundations (resilience attributes, sustainability-based metrics, risk and reliability). We then applied a hybrid multi-criteria procedure, informed by twelve domain experts, to weigh the selection criteria and rank the identified R-KPIs."

Among the five selection criteria, "criticality" and "manageability" emerged as dominant, a result consistent with the high stakes of service continuity in CIs. The final ranking identifies the "probability of risk" as the most effective R-KPI, followed by "energy self-sufficiency" and "functionality loss". According to senior author Elio Padoano, the results suggest tha this ordering substantiates the centrality of risk-based and energy-autonomy considerations in AI-integrated infrastructures, while suggesting that minimum performance, although conceptually important, contributes comparatively less discriminatory power.

The proposed ten-step framework operationalises these indicators by guiding analysts through goal-setting, KPI typology, operational state, scale and stage of disturbance, monitoring, and iterative improvement. The authors demonstrate the applicability of the framework on an open dataset from a centrifugal water pump, where a support vector machine regression is used to fit the resilience curve following a disturbance on a specific day.

"The case study quantifies a recovery time of approximately 175.5 hours and zero energy self-sufficiency score, prompting concrete recommendations on redundancy, predictive maintenance, and decentralised energy provision," says Padoano.

Meanwhile, Ardebili is convinced that the study provides an advancement on knowledge about CI management in the presence of risk, because "the reader can gain a transferable methodology for resilience quantification, a defensible set of prioritised indicators, and an awareness of persisting gaps, notably the under-representation of the social dimension of CPSSs and the absence of standardised functionality-loss thresholds."

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Contact the author: Alì Aghazadeh Ardebili, University of Trento, DIPSCO, CogNosco Lab, Trento, Italy, a.a.ardebili@unitn.it.

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

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Journal

Journal of Safety Science and Resilience

DOI

10.1016/j.jnlssr.2024.12.005 

Method of Research

Content analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Resilience in Cyber-Physical Infrastructures: R-KPI prioritization, framework development, and case study insights

 

Research proposes fairness framework for faculty promotion and tenure decisions

University of California - Merced

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Granting promotions and tenure to faculty members is among the most consequential decisions a university makes. Growing evidence suggests the process doesn't always work as it should.

A commentary published in Science Advances finds that extraneous factors, including a candidate's race, gender and whether they took a university-approved leave of absence, can influence who earns promotion and tenure, threatening the integrity of a process intended to reward scholarly merit.

To address those vulnerabilities, researchers from the Center for Excellence in Faculty Advancement (CEFA) — a multi-institution consortium led by University of California, Merced Professor Christiane Spitzmueller and University of Houston Professor Juan Madera — have proposed a comprehensive framework for reform.

The framework, which the authors call SET, is built on three principles:

• Structure: Standardize the process to reduce arbitrary variation
• Empowerment: Give promotion and tenure candidates meaningful tools and protections
• Transparency: Open up the process in areas where it has been historically opaque

SET identifies targeted, evidence-based changes that institutions can make in existing processes to reduce bias and inconsistency and ensures that the most meritorious faculty are recognized regardless of their background.

The commentary draws on a decade of CEFA research involving nearly 2,000 promotion and tenure candidates and more than 10,000 external review letters.

Here is a closer look at the recommendations behind the three principles and the issues they are designed to address:

Structure

• Promotion and tenure (P&T) committees operate with high autonomy and low accountability. The framework would require committees to document the rationale behind their decisions so that inconsistent or unexplained judgments can be identified and addressed.
• Evaluate candidates jointly, either alongside a peer going up for tenure the same year, or against a previous candidate's portfolio. CEFA research shows this can significantly reduce racial disparities in outcomes. Underrepresented minority faculty — particularly Black faculty and Black women — faced harsher evaluations than non-URM peers, with productivity judged more critically. At the college level, underrepresented minority candidates received 7% more negative votes and were 44% less likely to receive a unanimous vote. CEFA's research found that racial disparities were significantly reduced when candidates were evaluated jointly rather than in isolation.
• The premium placed on unanimous committee votes as a "gold standard" for P&T should be reconsidered; underrepresented minority faculty are less likely to achieve them, making unanimity a de facto penalty.
• Faculty who used tenure clock extensions — university-approved delays typically taken for caregiving, illness, or other life circumstances — received significantly more negative committee votes in CEFA's dataset. Women are disproportionately affected because they are more likely to take extensions. Institutions should adopt explicit policies protecting candidates from being penalized for using approved extensions
• External review letters carry significant weight in tenure decisions, yet the process for selecting who writes them is inconsistently tracked and varies widely. CEFA's research shows the letters often reflect the writer’s characteristics more than the candidate’s accomplishments. Writers are disproportionately senior, male, and white. Candidates whose letters were written by women are more likely to be promoted; letters written by women use more positive language and less doubt-laden phrasing.
• Publicly disclose committee composition and ensure committees reflect diversity in both academic discipline and lived experience.

Empowerment

• Connect incoming faculty with a formal mentorship network and individual development plans from the start of their appointment. Candidates with established professional networks or senior sponsors navigate the process with significant informal advantages that peers without such connections lack.
• Standardize portfolio formats and provide explicit templates and performance benchmarks so candidates know exactly what is expected of them.
• Give candidates the opportunity to review committee reports before a vote occurs and provide formal mechanisms to rebut inaccurate or misrepresented information.
• Extend formal mechanisms that allow candidates to flag potential conflicts of interest among committee members or proposed external review letter writers.

Transparency

• Make committee composition publicly available before deliberations begin.
• Give candidates clear, accessible information about the P&T process, including access to the institution's informal norms and expectations — what the researchers call the "hidden curriculum."
• Ensure candidates have equal access to information about how their cases will be evaluated — not just those with well-connected mentors or senior colleagues willing to share insider knowledge.
• Require that the rationale for committee decisions be documented and available to equity reviewers, creating accountability without eliminating confidential deliberation.

"Given emerging evidence on bias and mechanisms for building equity in promotion and tenure decisions, now is the time for continued discourse, further experimental and field research to elucidate barriers and interventions to support equity and validity, and evidence-based reform," the authors wrote.

The commentary urges university leaders, faculty affairs administrators, and policymakers to treat the P&T process not as a fixed tradition but as a system that can and should be strengthened to ensure it consistently rewards genuine scholarly merit.

The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aed6134 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Addressing equity and validity in faculty career advancement

 

Combing the general and the specific for urban science and policy

Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology

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Workflows in urban studies should involve policy makers, researchers, and the local public to ensure that data is both generalizable for urban research and specific to the needs and histories of the particular city

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Credit: MPI GEA

As the world’s population becomes more and more urban, cities are emerging as key components of the Anthropocene - both as major contributors to climate change and as potential trendsetters for innovation and action.  But in order to understand the role of cities in the Earth system and chart sustainable pathways to the future, researchers face a daunting challenge: integrating diverse interdisciplinary data and translating the findings into effective, equitablie policy.

Now, in a new paper in Nature Cities, an international team of researchers offer a way forward, arguing for workflows that bring particularising perspectives and generalising perspectives together and long-term institutional spaces that stimulate constant interaction between researchers, publics, and policy makers.

“Decisions made in cities today will shape the future of humanity for generations,” says Patrick Roberts, director of the Department of Coevolution of Land Use and Urbanisation at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (MPI GEA), and lead author of the study. “To make informed decisions, we need particularising and generalising perspectives, insights from the past and present, and policy and academic debates to be in constant engagement.”

The study presents four principles for designing spaces and workflows for transdisciplinary urban science:

1. Generalising and particularising research areas are brought together with urban communities and policy makers from the beginning, to build theory and identify pressing areas, making the most of existing knowledge in data collection
2. Transdisciplinary data hubs are maintained by researchers with both generalising and particularising specialties to develop standard definitions and practices
3. Novel case studies are used to test generalities, refine theory, and update models rather than being isolated as ‘exceptions’
4. ‘Generalisers’ and ‘particularisers’ come together to discuss and present results to community organisations and policy makers

These principles come out of a recent conference at MPI GEA, Connecting Urbanism Across Time and Space, which brought together urban scientists, physicists, mathematicians, biologists, archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and artists, including many policy advisors and researchers involved in the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

“The particularist and generalist traditions are not only compatible but deeply intertwined,” says Christopher Carleton, co-author and senior scientist at MPI GEA. “And both are required for understanding the urban past and anticipating the global urban future.”

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Journal

Nature Cities

DOI

10.1038/s44284-026-00461-9 

Article Title

Connecting the general and particular in interdisciplinary urban research

Article Publication Date

12-Jun-2026

 

Unique Journal of Research on Research committed to experimentation and evidence-informed practice

New open access journal aims to serve and consolidate the research-on-research community

Taylor & Francis Group

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The Research-on-Research Association (RORATION) and Taylor & Francis have announced the launch of the Journal of Research on Research (J·ROR), an open-access, community-owned home for research on how research is funded, organized, conducted, communicated, and evaluated. Both a platform for scholarly work and a site of active engagement with the challenges and opportunities facing the research community, J·ROR aims to support evidence-informed change of research systems, partners, and practices.

Publishing and conducting research on research

J·ROR will occupy a unique dual role: as a journal that both publishes and conducts research on research. Taylor & Francis will share in this endeavor, providing access to data regarding publishing processes across its portfolio. Through hosting in-journal experiments on innovations in areas such as peer review, editorial workflows and other publishing processes, the editorial team will generate evidence to inform not only J·ROR 's own practices but also contribute to advancing standards across scholarly communication.

“We believe that a field committed to producing robust evidence for the enhancement of research practices and culture must also be willing to apply that evidence to its own operations,” explain the editors in an inaugural editorial. “Accordingly, J·ROR is committed to integrating emerging insights into its editorial practices as they become available.”

Transparent peer review

J·ROR's peer review system aims to function as a dialogue between authors, editors, and reviewers, providing formative feedback to strengthen contributions before publication. This will be supported through a transparent peer review approach, publishing review reports alongside articles (open reports) and offering reviewers the option to sign their reviews.

From launch, J·ROR is partnering with the publish-review-curate platform MetaROR to consider works reviewed via their platform for publication.

Uniting a disparate field

J·ROR provides a central location for all research that identifies as 'research on research.' The journal embraces all ways of doing, knowing and understanding how research is practiced, produced, evaluated, and governed.

"Our primary motivation for this journal was the desire to serve our scattered field and our community," said the editors. "In its current disparate state, our multidisciplinary field risks contributing to recreating its own research waste, which many in the field feel we should be working to reduce."

Community ownership

J·ROR is published by Taylor & Francis but owned by the research-on-research community through RORATION, an independent scholarly society set up to oversee the journal’s development. This will ensure J·ROR’s evolution is shaped by that community and its values, whoever that community becomes.

Gemma Derrick, Editor-in-Chief of J·ROR and Professor (Research Policy & Culture) at The University of Bristol, said: “The Journal of Research on Research represents a shared achievement, shaped by years of mutual learning between our editors, RORATION, Taylor & Francis, and a global community committed to improving how research is conducted, evaluated, and supported. We look forward to continuing these discussions as the journal develops.”

Amanda Ward, Senior Vice President of Journals Publishing at Taylor & Francis, said: “It has been wonderful for Taylor & Francis to collaborate with a group of editors with such a clear and ambitious vision for their new journal. We’re excited to partner with this community-led initiative and look forward to seeing evidence produced by J·ROR experimentation helping to inform how other Taylor & Francis journals develop.”

J·ROR is now open for submissions across all areas of research on research. The journal particularly welcomes contributions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and advance understanding, either empirically or conceptually, of how research systems function and how they can be improved.

 

Our brains may be automatically filtering out negative words

Association for Psychological Science

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We tend to assume that emotionally charged words are more likely to grab our attention. An insult shouted across a crowded room or a disturbing phrase overheard on television can seem impossible to ignore. But a new study published in Psychological Science suggests the opposite may happen before words reach conscious awareness.

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that when people were focused on a visual task, they were less likely to consciously notice negative spoken words than neutral ones. The findings offer new insight into how the brain determines which information enters conscious awareness and which remains outside it.

“This study is a nice example of how our conscious intuitions regarding what we notice are not always what our unconscious is doing,” said lead author Gal R. Chen, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Although much of the brain’s processing occurs outside of conscious awareness, scientists know little about how information is selected to enter consciousness, particularly in hearing. Insights into this process could explain how nonconscious information might influence an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. 

Much of what scientists know about nonconscious processing comes from studies of vision in which researchers briefly flash images that participants are unable to consciously report seeing. Speech, however, presents a different challenge because spoken words, unlike images, cannot be delivered in a split second. Researchers have therefore struggled to determine how much information the brain can process from spoken language before a person becomes aware of it.

Chen and his colleagues set out to examine whether the emotional meaning of spoken words influences their chances of reaching awareness when people are focused on another task.

In the study, 101 Hebrew-speaking adults were instructed to identify whether a figurine on a screen was identical to the one before it while listening to a stream of meaningless pseudowords. Occasionally, a real Hebrew word, either emotionally negative or emotionally neutral, was inserted into the audio stream. After hearing the word, participants were asked whether they had noticed it and completed additional tests designed to measure their awareness.

“We assumed initially that people would notice the negative stuff more because that is our conscious intuition,” Chen said. “There is a lot of data showing that when you see or hear something negative you slow down or make more mistakes.”

Instead, the opposite happened: Participants were more likely to notice the neutral words over the negative words.

“We thought it was a mistake,” Chen said. “So we repeated the study while adding new words. The results gave us the same trend: People notice negative words less.”

The effect persisted when the researchers repeated the experiment with the same visual task but a larger set of words. To examine whether the observation was specific to conditions of high effort, the researchers conducted the experiment again, but this time replaced the demanding visual task with a much easier one. Again, participants were more likely to notice neutral words over negative ones.  

One possible explanation for this observation, the researchers said, is that consciously experiencing negative information is costly, and the cognitive system sometimes opts not to pay this price.

“It may be the default of the unconscious mind to suppress information that may be harmful to us,” Chen said. “If your primary task is to talk to me, random words popping up are not helpful. And if these words slow you down, the default unconscious bias might be, ‘don’t bring them around.’”

The findings may offer new avenues for studying mental health conditions. Chen speculates that future research could investigate whether the same unconscious filtering process operates differently in people with anxiety disorders, phobias, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

“The normal population notices negative words less often compared to neutral words,” Chen said. “In a clinical population, they might not have this selection bias.”

“If you think of the unconscious as a gatekeeper guarding us against things that may harm us or influence our decisions, you might ask what happens if this gatekeeper screws up,” he added.

Chen noted that the study has limitations. For example, it examined single words rather than conversations or natural speech, and it did not test highly positive or taboo words, which could produce different results. He said that future research could explore whether the same effects appear in sentences, stories, and more realistic listening environments.

For now, he said, the findings suggest that the nonconscious mind may play a larger role in shaping our everyday experiences than we realize.

Reference

Chen, G.R., Maswadeh, Z., Deouell, L., & Hassin, R.R. (2026). Conscious detection of spoken words depends on their valence. Psychological Science, 47(5), 303–317.

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Journal

Psychological Science

DOI

10.1177/09567976261434113 

Article Title

Conscious Detection of Spoken Words Depends on Their Valence