A comparison of exemplar and statistical evidence in reducing counter‐arguments and responses to a message

Limón, Margarita; Kazoleas, Dean

doi:10.1080/08824090409359991

Cited by 47 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Statistical evidence is more effective in altering beliefs and attitudes, which are arguably more cognitive in nature, while narrative evidence is more effective in altering intentions, which are more affective [24]. Additionally, several studies suggest that narrative evidence may be less cognitively elaborated, as it is subject to less defensive processing [25] and less counter-argument [26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative warmth and quantitative competence: Message type affects impressions of a speaker

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Persuasion research often focuses on how source characteristics affect attitude change in response to a message; however, message characteristics may also alter perceptions of the source. The Message-Based Impression Formation effect (M-BIF) suggests that perceivers use features of messages to infer characteristics of the source, and that such inferences may have a variety of consequential outcomes. In particular, the choice of narrative versus statistical evidence may have implications for the perceived warmth and competence of a source. In five experiments, narrative arguments led to greater perceptions of source warmth and statistical arguments led to greater perceptions of source competence. Across the two behavioral studies, a matching effect emerged: participants preferred to work on cooperative tasks with partners who had provided narratives, and competitive tasks with partners who had provided statistical evidence. These results suggest that the evidence type chosen for everyday communications may affect person perception and interpersonal interaction.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative warmth and quantitative competence: Message type affects impressions of a speaker

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Nonstatistical expressions denote health-promoting messages without any precise numbers and are usually used in the description of examples and stories [ 53 ]. No conclusion has been reached about the persuasiveness of these two expression types [ 34 ]. A meta-analysis [ 23 ] and an investigation of 1270 participants [ 54 ] found that statistical messages were more convincing than narrative ones.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A statistical expression message refers to a missive that contains quantitative or numerical information [ 33 ]. Many studies have compared the persuasiveness of different types of information organization, especially the statistical and narrative evidence types, albeit with inconclusive results [ 34 , 35 ]. Allen and Preiss [ 23 ] believed that the use of statistical expressions in a highly technological world is crucial.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Associated With Influential Health-Promoting Messages on Social Media: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo

Rao¹,

Zhang²,

Lv³

et al. 2020

JMIR Med Inform

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Social media is a powerful tool for the dissemination of health messages. However, few studies have focused on the factors that improve the influence of health messages on social media. Objective To explore the influence of goal-framing effects, information organizing, and the use of pictures or videos in health-promoting messages, we conducted a case study of Sina Weibo, a popular social media platform in China. Methods Literature review and expert discussion were used to determine the health themes of childhood obesity, smoking, and cancer. Web crawler technology was employed to capture data on health-promoting messages. We used the number of retweets, comments, and likes to evaluate the influence of a message. Statistical analysis was then conducted after manual coding. Specifically, binary logistic regression was used for the data analyses. Results We crawled 20,799 Sina Weibo messages and selected 389 health-promoting messages for this study. Results indicated that the use of gain-framed messages could improve the influence of messages regarding childhood obesity (P<.001), smoking (P=.03), and cancer (P<.001). Statistical expressions could improve the influence of messages about childhood obesity (P=.02), smoking (P=.002), and cancer (P<.001). However, the use of videos significantly improved the influence of health-promoting messages only for the smoking-related messages (P=.009). Conclusions The findings suggested that gain-framed messages and statistical expressions can be successful strategies to improve the influence of messages. Moreover, appropriate pictures and videos should be added as much as possible when generating health-promoting messages.

show abstract

“…Besides positive message evaluations, a number of authors observe another interesting pattern. [43] find that numerical messages lead to more cognitive responses than narrative messages and argue that this difference might be "a result of difficulty in disputing someone's story" (p. 296) as opposed to disputing more objective, numerical evidence. Research by Slater and Rouner [34], too, finds considerable differences in the effects of numerical and narrative evidence for different groups of recipients, namely that value-affirmative recipients (who process value-congruent messages as a means to reinforce existing beliefs) use numerical messages to reinforce existing beliefs, while value-protective recipients (who defend their values against value-discrepant messages) tend to counter-argue against numerical evidence.…”

Section: The Persuasive Effects Of Numerical and Narrative Messagesmentioning

confidence: 94%

How to Communicate Food Safety after Radiological Contamination: The Effectiveness of Numerical and Narrative News Messages

Wolf

Perko

Thijssen

2020

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Food risk and the safety of foodstuffs in the aftermath of contamination are highly sensitive issues to communicate. Food risks receive extensive attention from the news media, which requires messages to be carefully drafted to minimize harm and avoid unnecessary boycotts. Once a food risk is deemed eliminated, communication efforts must rebuild trust among consumers. The latter is a particularly difficult task after radiological contamination. This study tests whether numerical messages, narrative messages, or messages combining both elements are more effective in persuading the public to consume foodstuffs from Fukushima, a region that continues to battle stigma since the nuclear accident in 2011. We employ a survey-embedded experiment on a sample of the general Belgian population (N = 1085), during which respondents are presented with a mock news article presenting either a (1) numerical, (2) narrative, or (3) a combined message and test their subsequent evaluation of the article. We find that the numerical message leads to significantly higher perceived credibility and message acceptance than both the combined and the narrative message. Furthermore, we find that attitudes towards nuclear energy have a strong independent effect on message acceptance and evaluation, with those respondents who report a more positive stance towards nuclear energy more readily accepting the message. Food risk and safety communication may thus benefit from adopting a more detached, numerical approach for sensitive issues.

show abstract

A comparison of exemplar and statistical evidence in reducing counter‐arguments and responses to a message

Cited by 47 publications

References 17 publications

Narrative warmth and quantitative competence: Message type affects impressions of a speaker

Narrative warmth and quantitative competence: Message type affects impressions of a speaker

Factors Associated With Influential Health-Promoting Messages on Social Media: Content Analysis of Sina Weibo

How to Communicate Food Safety after Radiological Contamination: The Effectiveness of Numerical and Narrative News Messages

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About