title: Effects of emphasis terminology in warning instructions on compliance intent and understandability.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The aim of this study was to examine whether differing terminology in warning directives can influence compliance intentions and understandability. Despite its important role for warning effectiveness, warning instructions has not received much attention in warning research. Emphasis terms that can be used in warning directives were investigated.
  
  
  METHODS
  Three experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, participants rated a set of 12 warning directive statements consisted of one basic warning directive, which served as the control and the other 11 one- or two-word emphasis phrases that added to a basic directive. In Experiment 2, participants rated 37 emphasizers on compliance intent. In Experiment 3, participants rated the same emphasizers on understandability.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The first 2 experiments showed substantial differences in compliance intentions depending on the emphasizer used. For example, some terms and phrases (e.g., "urgent") produced high compliance intent whereas others showed lower compliance intent (e.g., "recommended"). In Experiment 3, some terms were rated as understandable (e.g., "important"), whereas others were rated as somewhat understandable (e.g., "compulsory").
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The addition of emphasis terms to the warning directives influenced people's compliance intent and understandability. In addition, significant correlations were found among compliance intent, understandability, and measures of variability.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  . The findings from this research could aid warning designers in selecting understandable wording that gives rise to different levels of compliance intentions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, 640 Poe Hall, CB 7650, 2310 Stinson Drive, Raleigh, NC 27695-7650, USA. Electronic address: soyun0714@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Soyun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, 640 Poe Hall, CB 7650, 2310 Stinson Drive, Raleigh, NC 27695-7650, USA. Electronic address: WogalterM@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Michael S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Wogalter
mesh_terms: D000056:Accident Prevention / Q000379:methods*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003142:Communication; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012449:Safety; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Compliance intent; Perceived hazard; Terminology; Vocabulary; Warnings