Effects of Health Responsibility Frames: Testing a Mediation Model of Attributions, Emotions, and Social Support...

When news stories cover health and illness, they often address issues of responsibility. These responsibility frames can affect recipients' responsibility beliefs (i.e. attributions) and thereby indirectly affect emotions and motivation to support people affected by health problems. To date, it is not fully understood how responsibility frames affect social support intentions, and if attributions and emotions mediate this effect. In an online experiment with N = 1,088 German participants, we tested the effects of responsibility frames (individually controllable vs. non-controllable) for type 2 diabetes and depression on social support intentions through responsibility attributions and emotional reactions. Mediation analyses show that responsibility frames indirectly affect social support intentions through social-societal attributions and sympathy. This mediation effect was observed in both depression and type 2 diabetes, despite issue-specific differences in attributions, emotions, and social support intentions. We discuss these findings considering framing effects research and health reporting.