The effectiveness of interventions designed to promote cancer prevention and early detection behaviors often depends on the persuasiveness of a public service announcement, brochure, print advertisement, educational program, or communication from a health professional. Appeals aimed at persuading individuals to perform a particular health behavior can be framed in different ways. In particular, information can be framed to emphasize relevant gains or losses. Gain-framed messages present the benefits that are accrued through adopting the behavior. Loss-framed messages convey the risks of not adopting the requested behavior. Although these two kinds of messages convey essentially the same information, in certain circumstances, one may be much more persuasive than the other. The fundamental goal of the research program described in this application is to investigate the role of framing in developing maximally persuasive messages promoting cancer prevention and early detection behaviors. In the context of implementing and evaluating circumscribed interventions to promote pap testing and screening mammography, those variables that determine the situations in which gain-framing is more persuasive than loss-framing and vice-versa are investigated. This program of research explores three such variables: (a) whether the goal of the behavior targeted for change is prevention or early detection, (b) whether the message frame is operationalized in terms of avoiding or attaining desirable or undesirable outcomes associated with the relevant health behavior, and (c) whether the individual is highly involved with or cares little about the relevant health domain. Moreover, two variables that may mediate the impact of framed messages on behavior are considered: (a) changes in perceptions of risk and (b) the arousal of emotion. Identification of mediating mechanisms will allow the findings from this program of research to be generalized to persuasion attempts in other cancer domains. Three experiments are proposed. Experiments 1 and 2 involve interventions, respectively, to promote pap testing for the prevention and early detection of cervical cancer and screening mammography for the early detection of breast cancer. Experiment 3 is also a mammography intervention but recruits a sample of largely minority women served by a community health clinic. The three studies, as a group, address themselves to five hypotheses regarding the influence of message framing on persuasion and behavior change.
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