Narrative forms of communication-including entertainment education, journalism, literature, testimonials, and storytelling-are emerging as important tools for cancer prevention and control. To stimulate critical thinking about the role of narrative in cancer communication and promote a more focused and systematic program of research to understand its effects, we propose a typology of narrative application in cancer control. We assert that narrative has four distinctive capabilities: overcoming resistance, facilitating information processing, providing surrogate social connections, and addressing emotional and existential issues. We further assert that different capabilities are applicable to different outcomes across the cancer control continuum (e.g., prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, survivorship). This article describes the empirical evidence and theoretical rationale supporting propositions in the typology, identifies variables likely to moderate narrative effects, raises ethical

This study attempts to show the relevance of behavioral theory for developing communications designed to promote healthy and/or to prevent or alter unhealthy behaviors. After describing an integrative model of behavioral prediction, the model's implications for designing persuasive communications are considered. Using data from a study on smoker's intentions to continue smoking and to quit, it is shown how the theory helps identify the critical beliefs underlying these or other intentions. Finally, it is argued that although behavioral theory can help identify the beliefs that should be targeted in a persuasive communication, our ability to change these beliefs will ultimately rest on communication theory.During the past decade, there has been a growing recognition of the usefulness of behavioral theory in the development of behavior-change interventions (see, e.g., National Institutes of Health, 1997). Theories of behavioral prediction and behavior change are useful because they provide a framework to help identify the determinants of any given behavior, an essential first step in the development of successful interventions to change that behavior. Clearly, the more one knows about the determinants of a given behavior, the more likely it is that one can develop an effective communication or other type of intervention to reinforce or change that behavior. The purpose of this study was to show the relevance of behavioral theory for developing communications designed to promote healthy and/or to prevent or alter unhealthy behaviors.Although there are many theories of behavioral prediction such as the Theory of Planned

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SignificanceWhy do humans share information with others? Large-scale sharing is one of the most prominent social phenomena of the 21st century, with roots in the oldest forms of communication. We argue that expectations of self-related and social consequences of sharing are integrated into a domain-general value signal, representing the value of information sharing, which translates into population-level virality. We analyzed brain responses to New York Times articles in two separate groups of people to predict objectively logged sharing of those same articles around the world (virality). Converging evidence from the two studies supports a unifying, parsimonious neurocognitive framework of mechanisms underlying health news virality; these results may help advance theory, improve predictive models, and inform new approaches to effective intervention.