A qualitative study of college student responses to conflicting messages in advertising: anti-binge drinking public service announcements versus wine promotion health messages

Abstract

Employing qualitative methodology to understand how college students respond to conflicting messages will assist health promotion practitioners develop more effective alcohol abuse prevention messages and provide suggestions for researchers for studying this phenomenon from other perspectives in the future. Implications are further discussed within.

Two-Sided Messages for Health Risk Prevention: The Role of Argument Type, Refutation, and Issue Ambivalence

“…The finding that affective arguments lead to a more positive attitude toward the message can be attributed to the fact that, in general, binge drinking is more associated with consummatory motivations than with instrumental ones (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982;Martin & Tesser, 1992;Pham, 1998). This finding also accords with Ahn et al (2011), who state that anti-binge drinking messages should focus on particular, affective, and real-life arguments instead of broader and cognitive arguments.…”

“…In other words, they are one-sided in their argumentation. However, overuse of such one-sided negative appeal may lead to habituation, possibly evoking a saturation effect (Ahn, Wu, Kelly, & Haley, 2011;Devlin et al, 2007). The present study assesses an alternative and potentially more persuasive way of communicating health risks: two-sided messages, "in which the communicator takes into account both sides of an issue, but actually still favors one side" (Hovland, 1954).…”

The credibility of refutation in two-sided anti-drug messages

“…In other words, they are one-sided in their argumentation. However, overuse of such one-sided, fear-evoking appeals leads to credibility loss, habituation, and possibly aversive reactions (Ahn et al, 2011;Devlin et al, 2007).…”

Health versus Appearance Focus in One- versus Two-sided Messages Discouraging Sun Tanning

“…However, this mere focus on the negative aspects of unhealthy behavior is rather one-sided. Overuse of such one-sided negative appeal can lead to habituation, possibly evoking a saturation effect (Ahn et al, 2011;Devlin et al, 2007). The present study assesses an alternative and potentially more persuasive way of communicating health risks: two-sided messages, "in which the communicator takes into account both sides of an issue, but actually still favors one side" (Hovland, 1954).…”