When Images Speak with Words: Affective Priming in EPPM-Framed Messages and the Pitfalls of Affective Misalignment

Despite the global prevalence of mental health issues, many individuals resist seeking professional help. Fear appeal messages can motivate behavior change, but their effectiveness may depend on emotional cues from accompanying images. This study investigates how affective priming images interact with Extended Parallel Process Model-based text messages to influence help-seeking intentions for mental health concerns. A three factor between-subjects experiment, with affective primes (positive vs. negative), threat (low vs. high), and efficacy (low vs. high) as manipulated variables (N = 458) revealed the findings: high-efficacy messages significantly increased help-seeking intentions, whereas threat alone had no main effect; the interaction of high threat and high efficacy yielded the strongest behavioral intentions, consistent with EPPM predictions; and affective priming images moderated these effects - positive images decreased the persuasiveness of high-efficacy messages under low threat, while negative images increased high-threat defensiveness. These results underscore the critical role of emotional alignment between images and text in health messaging. The study advances EPPM theory by integrating affective priming and offers practical insights for designing mental health campaigns, particularly in image-driven social media contexts.