Citation

McCormick M, McElroy T. Judgm. Decis. Mak. 2009; 4(3): 248-255.

Affiliation

Appalachian State University; University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Society for Judgment and Decision Making)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Persuading people to adjust their behavior so that it is more consonant with a healthy lifestyle is no easy matter. Health care organizations are replete with attempts at influencing people to live a more healthy life. Designers of health-persuasive messages can attempt to either encourage a more healthy way of life or discourage an unhealthy one. Determining how the presentational frame of the message influences individuals is of particular importance in health care since the effectiveness of the intended message can have direct bearing on human health and quality of life.

Research has shown that framing messages in terms of benefits or detriments can have a substantial influence on intended behavior. For prevention behaviors, positively framed messages have been found to elicit stronger behavioral intentions than negatively framed messages. Research also seems to indicate that certain contextual features contribute to the persuasiveness of a message. In the present research we test how message framing, contextually presented affect and the number of argument factors interact and contribute to the persuasiveness of a health related message. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that, in our prevention focused task, increasing the number of arguments increased behavioral intentions (BI) for positively framed messages when subjects were cued, via negative affect, to be attentive to the message. This resulted in a significant framing effect for messages with the maximum number of arguments and a negative background picture. An account of contextual influence in persuasive health messages is discussed.