Increasing selective exposure to health messages by targeting person versus behavior schemas

Schema correspondence theory (Brannon and Brock, 1994) was applied to the topic of selective exposure to health information. The following question was asked: When do people prefer to expose themselves to health-relevant information tailored to match their own needs and values (i.e., recipient self-schema matching) versus the values and goals that the healthy behavior brings to mind (i.e., behavior schema matching)? In general, recipient self-schema matched messages tended to be preferred over behavior schema matched messages. However, this tendency was attenuated to the extent that the behavior had a very well defined (prototypical) schema.