Should health communication regarding Covid‐19 emphasize self‐ or other‐focused impacts of mitigation behaviors? Insights from two message matching studies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21739522 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ian O'Dowd (0000-0001-9773-5780, University of Minnesota, corresponding author), Keven Joyal‐Desmarais (0000-0003-0657-8367, Centre Intégré Universitaire de Santé et de Services Sociaux du Centre-Sud-de-l'Île-de-Montréal), Alexandra Scharmer (University of Minnesota), Ashley Walters (Department of Psychology University of Minnesota Minneapolis Minnesota USA), Ashley D Walters (0000-0001-6647-1698, University of Minnesota), M Snyder (0000-0002-3351-8215, University of Minnesota) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 363-392 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1529-7489 • E-ISSN: 1530-2415 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/asap.12349 |
| OpenAlex | W4377287670 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
Mask‐wearing, social distancing, and vaccination remain effective ways to mitigate the spread of COVID‐19. Yet, many hesitate to enact some or all these preventive behaviors. We created three persuasive messages—framed to promote benefits to either (1) oneself, (2) close‐others, or (3) distant‐others—to determine whether the effectiveness of these messages varied based on personality differences (specifically independent/interdependent self‐construal and chronic construal level). In two online experiments ( N = 862), we measured individual differences and showed participants one of the three messages. Consistent interactions between interdependent self‐construal and message conditions showed that those high in interdependent self‐construal responded most positively to the self‐focused messages promoting mask‐wearing, social distancing, and COVID‐19 vaccination. Those low in interdependent self‐construal responded most negatively to the self‐focused messages. Although no interaction effect was observed for independent self‐construal, and inconsistent evidence emerged for construal level, other‐focused messages performed either better or equally well to the self‐focused messages for most participants and may thus be promising for future public health communication efforts
Construal level theory · Distancing · Health communication · Interdependence · Self construal · Social distance · Sociology · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Communication · Cultural Differences and Values · Medicine · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
Who is wearing a mask? Gender-, age-, and location-related differences during the Covid-19 pandemic
Construal Levels and Psychological Distance
It's the Mind-Set that Matters
A Review and Conceptual Framework for Understanding Personalized Matching Effects in Persuasion
Communal and Agentic Content in Social Cognition
How Message Fatigue toward Health Messages Leads to Ineffective Persuasive Outcomes
Emotional responses to prosocial messages increase willingness to self-isolate during the Covid-19 pandemic
Construal-level theory of psychological distance.
The Measurement of Independent and Interdependent Self-Construals
An interactive web-based dashboard to track Covid-19 in real time
G*Power 3
Promoting Mask-Wearing in Covid-19 Brand Communications
Evaluations of Self-Focused Versus Other-Focused Arguments for Social Distancing
Ingroup Identification as the Inclusion of Ingroup in the Self
Appealing to motivation to change attitudes, intentions, and behavior
The role of the self in responses to health communications
Testing for Covid-19
How do we optimize message matching interventions? Identifying matching thresholds, and simultaneously matching to multiple characteristics
Persuasion and Culture
Influencing attitudes toward near and distant objects
Levels of personal agency
Culture and the self
Appeals to image and claims about quality
Social Distance, Framing, and Judgment
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |