Persuasion, Emotions, and Behavioral Change

Given unresolved questions about the conditions under which anger appeals persuade, this experiment (N = 1,244) examined whether an appeal to anger (offense message) is more persuasive if combined with efficacy content emphasizing retribution. It also examined whether effects hinge on initial attitudes toward the advocated issue—here, regulation of soda marketing to improve children's health. Findings indicated a high offense message generated anger toward the message source among counterattitudinal individuals but, interestingly, also boosted their behavioral intentions. Exposure to any efficacy messaging increased policy support. Although offense and efficacy messaging did not interact, post hoc analyses revealed the expected pattern whereby message-consistent anger more strongly predicted policy support at higher levels of retributive efficacy beliefs. Response efficacy beliefs also moderated anger's relationships with persuasive outcomes, but the nature of the interaction depended on the outcome. These findings suggest promising new directions to revisit predictions made by extant theories of anger appeals. 

Emotionally evocative narratives are a common strategy to spread vaccine-related misinformation on social media, posing a potential threat to public health. This study tested the potential use of two emotional awareness strategies-affect labeling and reflections of feelings-to mitigate the impact of narrative misinformation. Using misinformation about HPV vaccines as a case, we found that emotional awareness did not affect sharing intentions, but increased concerns about HPV vaccine safety among female participants. Moreover, narrative transportation mediated the effect, such that female participants experienced greater transportation, leading to higher intentions to share misinformation and greater concerns about HPV vaccine safety. However, non-female participants experienced less transportation, resulting in lower intentions to share misinformation and fewer concerns about HPV vaccine safety. Affect labeling and reflections of feelings did not differ significantly in intentions or concerns. These findings suggest that emotional awareness manipulations in their current form may not be effective at addressing HPV vaccine-related narrative misinformation, especially for female participants. Future work needs to develop emotional awareness-based interventions to guide individuals to better manage and respond to emotionally evocative narrative misinformation on social media. 

Persuading vaccine-hesitant individuals to change their attitudes and behavior has been challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers have suggested harnessing emotions to increase the persuasiveness of vaccination messages. This study integrated the Appraisal Tendency Framework and the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction to examine the effect of incidental positive emotions on risk perceptions, anti-vaccination attitudes, and intentions to take the COVID-19 vaccines. A between-subject online experiment was conducted with vaccine-hesitant individuals in the US (N = 409). Structural equation modeling analysis revealed that incidental nostalgia and inspiration increased risk perceptions and reduced anti-vaccination attitudes. Further, data indicated that risk perceptions and anti-vaccination attitudes mediated the association between incidental nostalgia and vaccination intentions and between incidental inspiration and vaccination intentions. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. 

Messages about HIV stigma that include both the frames of HIV onset controllability and portrayals of living with HIV have nuanced effects, as they may increase or reduce HIV stigma. The current study has explored the possibility that the nuanced effects might be driven by emotions activated by the multi-framed messages, such as anger, disgust, and empathy. Results from an experiment with 352 college students in the United States have shown that different combinations of the two types of frames had different efficacy in activating the three emotions, which then influenced the levels of HIV stigma. Findings suggest that the nuanced effects of multi-framed messages are driven by anger, disgust, and empathy. The results also suggest that HIV onset controllability may be a dominant frame in multi-framed messages. These findings provides both conceptual and practical implications to health communication about HIV stigma. 

Endometriosis affects around 10% of women globally, yet the awareness and screening rates for this condition are relatively low. Narratives can be effective tools to increase disease awareness and generate health behavior changes. Utilizing an online survey-based experiment with a sample of 18–30-year-old young women (N = 326), this study aimed to investigate the efficacy of narrative messages in comparison to non-narrative messages for promoting endometriosis screening intention, as well as to evaluate whether hope appeal is more effective than fear appeal in narrative messages. The study also examined the potential mediating mechanisms through self-efficacy and positive affect responses that may help elucidate the effect of emotional appeals on behavioral intentions, while taking into account an individual's readiness to change. Findings indicated that narrative and non-narrative messages did not produce significantly different screening intentions. Notably, compared to the use of fear appeal, the use of hope appeal in narrative messages predicted a higher level of positive affect responses, which in turn, was associated with increased endometriosis screening intentions. Individual difference in readiness to engage in endometriosis screening was not found to be a significant moderator. These results have implications for future research utilizing hope appeals in narrative health messaging. The observed significant mediational pathway through positive affect adds to our understanding of positive discrete emotions as facilitators to health-related cognition and behavior changes.