Emotional Shifts in Health Messages as a Strategy for Generating Talk and Behavior Change
Susana Peinado1, Robin L Nabi1
1Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Health Communication
|January 25, 2024
Summary
Health messages with emotional shifts encourage more conversation and deeper processing, leading to greater persuasion. While talk spreads message content, immediate intentions to change behavior are key for long-term effects.
Area of Science:
- Health Communication
- Psychology
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Health messages aim to promote behavior change, but understanding features that prompt conversation is limited.
- Emotional experiences in messages can increase engagement and persuasion.
- Sequential emotional experiences may intensify emotions and engagement, influencing talk and persuasion.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine if emotional shifts within health messages influence talk and persuasion.
- To compare the effects of emotional shift messages versus single-valence messages on talk and persuasion.
Main Methods:
- A longitudinal experiment with 333 participants.
- Comparison of two texting while driving prevention messages with emotional shifts (negative-to-positive, positive-to-negative) against two single-valence messages (negative-only, positive-only).
Main Results:
- Emotional shift messages generated significantly more talk than single-valence messages.
- Emotional intensity and deeper message processing mediated the effect of emotional shift messages on persuasion.
- Immediate intentions to avoid texting while driving influenced one-week follow-up beliefs and behavior more than talk.
Conclusions:
- Emotional shifts in health messages enhance talk by increasing emotional intensity and message processing.
- Talk may be more crucial for spreading message content and reinforcing existing change rather than initiating it.
- Immediate behavioral intentions are stronger predictors of long-term behavior change than message-induced talk.
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