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

Abstract

In a 2 by 2 experimental design, this study investigates the impact of message sidedness (oneversus two-sided) and argument focus (health versus appearance) in messages to discourage sun tanning. The results of this study show that two-sided anti sun tanning messages receive more attention and generate a higher message content recall than their conventional one-sided counterparts. Additionally, when a message is two-sided, appearance focused arguments lead to lower behavioral intentions to suntan than health focused arguments, whereas for a onesided messages, health versus appearance focus has no different impact.