Enhancing the effectiveness of antismoking messages via self-congruent appeals.
A self-congruent effect model was applied to understand adolescents' responses to antismoking advertising that referred to the self or others. Experiment 1 showed that self-referring ads generated more negative smoking attitudes than other-referring ads among adolescents with independent self-construals, whereas other-referring ads generated more negative smoking attitudes than self-referring ads among adolescents with interdependent self-construals. A survey further showed that smokers rated themselves higher on a measure of independent self-construal than nonsmokers. Experiment 2 then found that self-referring ads are more effective than other-referring ads for smokers, who have independent self-construals. Findings supported the idea that health communication campaign designers can maximize message effectiveness by developing different messages for different target segments of the population based on their self-construals.
Chang
Chingching
C
Department of Advertising, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. shenc@nccu.edu.tw
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D000329:Advertising; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D012574:Schools; D012649:Self Concept; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000523:psychology*; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D040241:Social Marketing; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013624:Taiwan