Preaching to the choir? The influence of personal relevance on the effects of gain- and loss-framed health-promoting messages.
This article examines the moderating influence of personal relevance on the persuasive effects of gain- and loss-framed messages. We assessed current behaviour as a proxy for personal relevance, provided 169 participants with gain- and loss-framed messages advocating skin self-examination (SSE) and assessed intention to engage in SSE as the outcome measure. The results showed that loss-framed information was more persuasive than gain-framed information, but only for low-relevance participants. This suggests that loss-framed information might be mainly effective for recipients who need little persuading and, in fact, runs the risk of 'preaching to the choir'.
Wageningen University and Research Centre, The Netherlands. jonathan.vantriet@wur.nl
Jonathan
J
Van 't Riet
Rob
R
Ruiter
Hein
H
De Vries
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009426:Netherlands; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult