Understanding Public Resistance to Messages About Health Disparities

Abstract

Advocates and policymakers strategically communicate about health disparities in an effort to raise public awareness, often by emphasizing the social and economic factors that influence these disparities. Previous research suggests that predisposing political orientation and values related to self-reliance and personal responsibility may produce resistance to such messages. In this study, the authors culled 4 messages about the causes of disparities in life expectancy from public discourse and randomly presented them to a nationally representative sample of 732 Americans. Three indicators of message resistance were measured: belief that messages are weak, elicitation of anger, and production of counterarguments. Expected political differences in message resistance were identified, with Republicans perceiving messages to be weaker, arousing less anger, and eliciting more counterarguing than for Democrats. Among 3 messages that described the social determinants of health disparities, a message that identified the role of personal choices (explicitly acknowledging personal responsibility) produced the least anger and counterarguing among Republicans. Political differences in anger arousal and counterarguing can be explained, in part, by predisposing values toward personal responsibility. These findings have relevance for policy advocates seeking to bridge public divides surrounding health disparities and for scholars advancing theories of reactance to policy-relevant health messaging.

Women’s Awareness of and Responses to Messages About Breast Cancer Overdiagnosis and Overtreatment

“…Such items have been used in other work establishing the persuasive potential of health messages. 22–25 …”

How Motivated Reasoning and Temporal Frames May Polarize Opinions About Wildlife Disease Risk

“…These leanings are even more closely aligned with political parties when using implicit measures of party affiliation (Hawkins & Nosek, 2012). For this reason, recent work investigating the role of values and political orientation in message processing considers party leaners as partisans (Gollust & Cappella, 2014). The GfK data showed that 151 of the 168 participants who did not identify as one or the other, but rather as Independent, were considered party leaners; that is, the 151 participants identified themselves as either Republicans or Democrats when they were further asked, "Do you think of yourself as closer to the .…”

Development and Early Implementation ofThe Bigger Picture, a Youth-Targeted Public Health Literacy Campaign to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes

“…Respondents were also less aware of health disparities by race than by income (Booske, Robert, & Rohan, 2011). Among a group of nationally representative U.S. adults, predisposing values toward personal responsibility and political orientation account for some differences in reactions to messages about health disparities (Gollust & Cappella, 2014). Researchers and clinician soften identify personal responsibility and behavior as the natural starting point for health discourse, assumptions that resonate with values implicit in the “American Dream” (Lundell, Niederdeppe, & Clarke, 2013).…”