Saturday, July 8, 2017

Seeking and Acting Upon Health-Relevant Messages

What health-relevant information do you seek?  What health-relevant information do you avoid?  What health-relevant information do you act upon?  What health-relevant information do you not act upon?

The answers depend on factors contained in your personality, in messages, and in the interactions between your personality and the messages.  Let's discuss some of the more important of these.

The first is a dimension that underscores the role of personality that I discussed in a previous post:  promotion versus prevention.  Persons with a promotion orientation mostly look for, attend to, and act upon information that emphasizes health advantages contained within messages. Conversely, those with a prevention orientation mostly look for, attend to, and act upon information that emphasizes health dangers contained within messages.  For example, an article or video that extensively details the many benefits of adopting a stress management program would be particularly appealing to a promotion oriented person, whereas one that extensively details the many dangers of failing to adopt a stress management program would be particularly appealing to a prevention oriented person.  

Moreover, since perceived advantages mostly are subjective, how one frames an event is determinative.  The advantage that you perceive reveals your personality.  If you chose a promotion reason, you are “eager’ about the outcome that you expect to derive from your healthful change.  And if you chose a prevention reason, you are “vigilant’ about the outcome that you fear from not making the healthful change.  Eager anticipation suggests that you have a more hopeful orientation and vigilant anticipation, that you have a more fearful orientation.

The second is a dimension that underscores the role of messages.  Specifically, Matthias R. Hastall and Anna J. M.Wagner (2017) have introduced the notion of high-susceptibility and low-susceptibility messages.  Some health messages – such as printed material or videos  - are framed to emphasize gain whereas others emphasize loss.  Since gain messages directly or implicitly elaborate practices that benefit our physical or mental selves, they are more likely to attract the attention of persons with a promotion orientation, who are very susceptible to gain messages.  Conversely, loss messages that directly or implicitly elaborate practices that undermine our physical or mental selves are most likely to attract the attention of persons with a prevention orientation who are very susceptible to loss messages.

The third dimension concerns responses to threatening messages.  Some individuals are called "sensitizers" because they direct their attention toward potential threats in order to confront them head-on.  Others are "repressors" who turn their attention away from potential threats, essentially denying danger.  

So, when thinking about yourself, you might want to consider how you stand on the three dimensions: 1) promotion vs prevention, 2) susceptibility to gain vs susceptibility to loss, and 3) sensitizing vs repressing.  Equally important is how the three interact among themselves and with other features of your personality.  There is no straightforward equation that will enable you to use your understanding of the dimensions.  Since we all are unique, the possibilities are limitless.  Let's consider a simplified situation merely for illustration.

Imagine that I primarily am a promoter with a strong inclination toward gain and that I have a sensitizing orientation.  I see a health video about a recent study emphasizing that direct sun exposure between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. increases skin cancer risk. Taken at face value, given my promoter-gain status, one might presume that I would be less inclined to attend to this than to a message that emphasized health-enhancing sun exposure practices. On the other hand, since I am a sensitizer, taken at face value, I might be inclined to attend to the skin cancer risk message in order to combat the implied danger. There is, then, a kind of intrapersonal struggle that will determine how the three dimensions interact with my overall personality. As important, perhaps even more important, are contextual factors specific to me.  For instance, if my sibling developed a melanoma, that quite likely would trump everything else in directing my behavior. Conversely, if I am a top-flight inveterate golfer, that fact quite likely would be pivotal in determining my decision about accepting sun exposure.

Since only you can answer the health-relevant questions about information that you seek, avoid, act upon, and not act upon, by considering the three aforementioned dimensions, their interactions, and your unique contexts, you will be better equipped to validly decide health-critical questions.

References

Hastall, M. & Wagner, A. (2017).  Enhancing Selective Exposure to Health Messages and Health Intentions: Effects of Susceptibility Cues and Gain–Loss Framing.  Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, January 18, No Pagination Specified.  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000197

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