Message Framing and Defensive Processing: A Cultural Examination

Abstract

Past research has shown that health messages on safer sexual practices that focus on relational consequences are more persuasive than messages that focus on personal consequences. However, we theorize that it is defensiveness against personal risk framing that threatens the self among people from more individualistic cultures. Two studies tested this idea. Study 1 showed that European Americans were less persuaded by personal framing than by relational framing but that this pattern was not found for Asian Americans, who are more collectivistic. Study 2 showed that these defensive patterns were eliminated among European American participants when a person's self-image was affirmed. These results suggest defensive processes as the mechanism behind the differences in message framing effectiveness and motivate a closer look at cultural patterns.

Feelings of vulnerability in response to threatening messages: Effects of self-affirmation

“…Some show an increase in risk perceptions in response to a threatening message (Harris & Napper, 2005;Sherman et, al. 2000) but several others have not (e.g., Harris, Mayle, Mabbott, & Napper, 2007;Klein & Monin, 2009;Ko & Kim, 2010;Napper et al, 2009) or have found that for some individuals it can decrease risk perceptions (e.g., non-defensive individuals; Griffin & Harris, 2011;). These mixed findings provide even more evidence of the need to establish whether self-affirmation may have more reliable effects on feelings of vulnerability, and whether such effects mediate concomitant effects of self-affirmation on behavioral intentions.…”

Persuasiveness of anti-smoking messages: self-construal and message focus

“…In spite of the support for the congruency hypothesis, other studies have suggested that matching message focus with people's cultural orientation might not necessarily increase the persuasiveness of a health message. Specifically, scholars found that when a culturally matched message contained negative or threatening health information, the message may become less effective (Ko and Kim, 2010). Previous research suggested that people have self-serving bias and tend to process personally relevant messages that are intimidating in a biased manner (Kunda, 1987).…”

Applying health communications to mental illness stigma change

“…Empirical evidence on the impact of eliciting positive emotions to promote behavior change is scant particularly on changes that do not directly impact the individual. The potential impact of messages that aim to facilitate emotional reactions and processing of those emotions should be carefully considered (Cameron and Chan, 2008;Ko and Kim, 2010). Taken together, a presenter who gets to know the target audience, focussing on the local and targeting aspects of TLC4 in advance, should be able to craft a balanced and believable presentation that maximizes the benefits of emotion to drive altruistic behavior change benefiting people with mental health conditions.…”