Content area
Abstract
Changing beliefs about response efficacy and enhancing self-efficacy are critical components of persuasive messages designed to change health behavior. This dissertation examines how match versus mismatch between information targeting efficacy beliefs and temporarily primed regulatory focus affects the level of message elaboration, persuasion, and attitude strength.
Individuals' promotion or prevention focus was temporarily made salient by framing a behavioral change as health promotion or disease prevention. A match (mismatch) is defined as a fit (misfit) between the focus of the persuasive appeal and the frame of the message. The effects on persuasion of two matched conditions, response efficacy focus with prevention frame and self-efficacy focus with promotion frame, and two mismatched conditions, response efficacy focus with promotion frame and self-efficacy focus with prevention frame, are examined.
In study 1, participants read persuasive messages with introductory frames that were either matched or mismatched with the type of efficacy information in the body of the message. Strong and weak versions of the same message were created to help detect the extent of cognitive elaboration as a consequence of matching message frame and message efficacy focus. Following the persuasive messages, participants listed cognitive responses, completed attitude measures, and the need for cognition scale. Results indicate that participants discriminated more between strong and weak response efficacy focused messages and less between the strong and weak self-efficacy focused messages.
Study 2 used a pre-post experimental design with random assignments of subjects to matching conditions as those in study 1. Participants' actual flossing behavior was measured one week after the persuasion. The data indicate a significant increase in flossing behavior as a result of the intervention. The results also suggest that matching message regulatory frame with message efficacy focus leads to more extensive message related cognitive elaboration, especially in the form of counter argumentation. In addition, attitude becomes stronger structurally when message frame matches rather than mismatches with supporting efficacy information.
The findings indicate that regulatory frame and efficacy focus matching need not always increase persuasion, but it may increase the structural strength of the attitude.
