The negative health outcomes associated with some behaviors, such as cigarette smoking, occur far into the future and are therefore perceived as abstract. Messages that seek to communicate these outcomes face two challenges. First, the recipients of these messages are not focused on these long-term, abstract, consequences. Second, the messages often threaten freedom of choice and generate psychological reactance, so the individual seeks to reestablish control by rejecting the messages. This series of studies extends the theoretical relationships between risk perceptions, abstraction, threat to freedom of choice, and message effectiveness by testing the proposition that when high risk messages are processed more abstractly, at a high construal level orientation, they are more effective because the individual is focused on long-term, abstract health goals and because psychological reactance is lower. Specifically, this project will develop, test, and validate a mobile device game that can shift the user to a high construal level orientation, thereby improving the effectiveness of high risk messages. This approach is interdisciplinary, integrating the domains of communication, psychology and human computer interactions.
Mobile persuasive applications are used to guide people toward making desirable behavioral choices, such as stopping cigarette use, eating healthier food, managing money, recycling their water bottles, participating in community volunteer opportunities, exercising, and completing homework. This work will help to guide practitioners and designers of these applications, increasing understanding of what types of cognitive tasks and messages will most successfully increase message effectiveness and desired behavioral choice. Overall, this study contributes to increasing our understanding of how to develop and deliver messages so they have their intended effect.
The purpose of this project was to test how abstraction and distance cues can be used to increase the effectiveness of a persuasive message. This project has accomplished its goals with respect to both intellectual merit and broader impacts. INTELLECTUAL MERIT: One of the goals of this project was to help build the literature on the relationshp between construal level theory and persuasion, an area without much prior research. With five conference papers, one published paper and two more articles in the process of revision to top journals in the field, this project has accomplished this goal. The proposed study also built up the theoretical understanding of the relationship between construal level theory and psychological reactance theory, tested the use of mobile phones to shift how abstractly an individual is thinking, and illustrated with three studies that replicate on another how to encourage an individual to connect their concrete behavioral choices to their abstract goals by varying abstraction cues in a persuasive message. This project remained true to its interdisciplinary roots, drawing from the fields of communication, psychology, human computer interaction, and consumer behavior. BROADER IMPACTS: The broader impact of this work included developing predictive models to help in the design of more effective messages that guide people toward making more desirable behavioral (specific) choices in daily life that connect to their higher level (abstract) goals. The work on this project can guide practitioners and designers of mobile applications, public health campaigns and social outreach initaitves in the design of better messages. For example, one consistent (replicated across three studies) finding from this project is that by varying abstraction cues in a persuasive message, the message can foster the bridging of specific choices with abstract goals (connecting the decision to eat a particular fruit to the more abstract goal of eating healthy). This finding can be used in a number of different types of public outreach interventions. For example, an environmental conservation campaign could use this technique to help make the connection between recycling a particular bottle (specific behavioral choice) to the higher level goal to save the planet (abstract). This model is particularly useful in mobile persuasive interventions, as the mobile phone is connected in daily life, while the specific choices are being made. PROJECT OUTCOMES: Throughout the entire project period, we conducted a number of experiments and disseminated the findings. Bridging: Three studies comparing two theoretical models of connecting abstract goals to specific behavioral decisions were conducted. The findings across all three of these studies replicate one another and illustrate that by manipulating abstraction cues in the message, a persuasive message can be used to encourage this cognitive bridge between abstract goals and concrete chocies. We conducted the studies, worked with coders to analyze the textual response data, conducted stastistical analyses, and drafted articles. The first study on this topic was presented at the National Communication Association, 2013. The second two studies on this topic will be presented at the International Communication Association, 2015. All three studies (which replicate one another) have been submitted in one article to a top journal in the field and are under review. Shifting Abstraction Through Mobile Technology: Additionally, we developed a mobile application to shift how abstractly or concretely an individual was thinking, and studied the effectiveness of this application in three different experiments (public setting and laboratory). We also worked to refine the dependent measures used to measure abstraction. We developed the mobile application, pilot tested it, ran three experiments, analyzed the data, and drafted an article that will be presented as a poster at the International Communication Association, 2015. Re-construing Reactance: We have conducted experiments exploring the relationships between cognitive abstraction, risk level of the message, and threat to choice level of the message. We measured psychological reactance, message effectiveness, and abstraction level of the response. The article from this study is being prepared for journal submission. The project funded under this grant has generated five conference presentations, one published article, and two additional articles under revision to top journals in the field. This project has increased understanding of the relationship between construal level theory and persuasion, and has the ability to influence the design of effective persuasive messages.
