Lisa L. Massi Lindsey

Encouraging Family Discussion on the Decision to Donate Organs: The Role of the Willingness to Communicate Scale

Family discussion of organ donation has been found to double rates of family consent regarding organ donation. Therefore, family discussion is an important communication process to study in the effort to get more people to become organ donors. This investigation concerns the willingness to communicate about organ donation and its relationship to other variables and processes related to family discussion of organ donation. Previous research on willingness to communicate examined the antecedent variables of knowledge, attitude toward organ donation, and altruism. This research found that being willing to communicate about organ donation with ones family is related to prior thought and intent to sign an organ donor card, to perceiving organ donation messages as credible, and to feeling relatively low anxiety after reading organ donation messages. One week after being presented with the messages, willingness to communicate was found to be positively associated with worrying about the lack of donors, engaging in family discussion about organ donation, and having an organ donor card witnessed. It was negatively related to feeling personally uneasy about organ donation during the past week.

Anticipated Guilt as Motivation to Help Unknown Others: An Examination of Empathy as a Moderator

Previous research finds that messages that induce substantial perceptions of (a) an unknown-other directed threat, (b) response-efficacy, and (c) self-efficacy result in feelings of anticipated guilt that subsequently motivate behavioral intent, and ultimately, behaviors to avert the threat to unknown others. It is not clear, however, if certain individual differences make people more or less likely to experience anticipatory guilt. To this end, this study asks whether empathic concern and perspective taking moderates the relationship between exposure to such a message and anticipated guilt. This question is tested by focusing on the topic of bone marrow donation. Participants are assigned randomly to 1 of 3 message conditions and complete a questionnaire designed to assess perspective taking, empathic concern, and anticipated guilt. The data indicate that the message has a substantial direct effect on guilt anticipation, and neither a direct effect for the empathy dimensions nor an interaction effect between empathy and anticipated guilt are present.

The Impact of Video Streaming on Mathematics Performance

Relying on a series of four experiments, F. J. Boster, G. S. Meyer, A. J. Roberto, C. Inge, and R. E. Strom (2006) demonstrated that students exposed to videostreaming exhibited more improvement in examination performance than control students. In extension, this study tests the effect of using videostreaming with a very different topic (mathematics), with a very different student population (large urban), and with different grades (sixth and eighth). The results replicated Boster et al. (2006) and indicate that the mean examination performance for those in the video-streaming condition exceeds the mean examination performance of the control group.

Examining the persuasive effect of statistical messages: A test of mediating relationships

The current study tested the degree to which the sample size heuristic (Baesler & Bur goon, 1994), perceived verifiability of evidence (Ah Yun & Massi, 2000), and perceived message credibility (Kopfman, Smith, Ah Yun, & Hodges, 1998) mediate the relationship between the use of statistical evidence in a persuasive appeal and a persons attitude toward a given topic. Four hundred eighty‐six participants were exposed to one of three messages (statistical, narrative, or no‐evidence control) or a no‐message control condition and completed either a 12‐ (control) or 33‐item (experimental) survey that was designed to measure respondents’ perceptions of the sample size heuristic, verifiability of evidence, message credibility, and attitude toward a year‐round academic schedule. Path analysis and hierarchical regression modeling were employed to test the proposed model. Results revealed that the perceived sample size heuristic, verifiability of evidence, and message credibility mediate the relationship between statistical evidence and individuals’ attitudes. Additionally, the perceived sample size heuristic was found to be the strongest unique predictor of attitudes and confirmatory factory analysis results indicated that perceived verifiability and message credibility may be two indicators of a higher‐order factor. These findings and their implications for future research are discussed.

The Mediating Roles of Liking and Obligation on the Relationship between Favors and Compliance

This study examines two accounts to explain why doing a favor for someone leads to increased compliance from that person. Feelings of obligation and liking are posited as independent mediators of the relationship between favors and compliance. A model was tested with a sample of 73 female undergraduate participants. The model posited that attitude similarity leads to perceived similarity and subsequent feelings of liking, that favors lead to liking and obligation, and that liking and obligation lead to increased compliance. Findings indicated that favors increased liking and obligation and that liking affected compliance but obligation had no effect on compliance. The results challenge conventional wisdom concerning the influence of the norm of reciprocity.

Predictors of Engaging in Family Discussion About Organ Donation and Getting Organ Donor Cards Witnessed

Family knowledge of organ donation intentions has been found to double rates of family consent regarding organ donation; therefore, it is an important communication process to study in the effort to persuade more people to become organ donors. This article reports the results of a study based on the heuristic-systematic model of persuasion designed to assess predictors of family discussion of organ donation and getting organ donor cards witnessed. Possible predictors of family discussion and getting organ donor cards witnessed included individual differences and cognitive, emotional, and behavioral factors. A path model of the process leading to family discussion and getting organ donor cards witnessed is presented and results are discussed for their practical importance.

Developing Effective Campaign Messages to Prevent Neural Tube Defects: A Qualitative Assessment of Women's Reactions to Advertising Concepts

The incidence of neural tube defects (NTDs), serious birth defects of the brain and spine that affect approximately 3,000 pregnancies in the United States each year, can be reduced by 50–70% with daily periconceptional consumption of the B vitamin folic acid. Two studies were designed to assess college womens reactions to and perceptions of potential campaign advertising concepts derived from preproduction formative research to increase folic acid consumption through the use of a daily multivitamin. Study one assessed draft advertising concepts in eight focus groups (N = 71) composed of college-enrolled women in four cities geographically dispersed across the United States. Based on study one results, the concepts were revised and reassessed in study two with a different sample (eight focus groups; N = 73) of college women in the same four cities. Results indicated that participants generally responded favorably to concepts in each of the two studies, and provided insight into individual concepts to increase their overall appeal and effectiveness. The specific findings and implications of these results are discussed.

Understanding Optimal Nutrition Among Women of Childbearing Age in the United States and Puerto Rico: Employing Formative Research to Lay the Foundation for National Birth Defects Prevention Campaigns

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are serious birth defects of the brain and spine that affect approximately 3,000 pregnancies in the United States each year and affected 404 pregnancies in Puerto Rico from 1996 to 2002. Consuming the B vitamin folic acid can reduce the incidence of NTDs 50%–70%, and recent efforts to reduce NTD rates have focused on increasing the number of childbearing-aged women who take a vitamin containing folic acid every day. As the first stage of formative research in campaign planning, two exploratory, qualitative studies were conducted in order to (a) understand the complexity of vitamin use among women in the United States and Puerto Rico and (b) serve as a foundation on which to develop national communication and education interventions. Also, this information shed light on theories that might be used to guide campaign development. Results indicated that campaign messages designed to increase folic acid use through multivitamin supplementation in the United States must address womens barriers to vitamin use (e.g., cost, time), increase womens perceived need for multivitamins (e.g., identify immediate, tangible results from taking a daily multivitamin), and address the relationship between daily food choices and the need for supplementation. Future campaign messages in Puerto Rico must focus on many of these same issues, in addition to increasing womens knowledge about when folic acid should be taken in relation to pregnancy and addressing womens perceptions that vitamins cause weight gain (an undesirable outcome for most participants). The practical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed in terms of their contribution to the development of a creative new approach to increase multivitamin consumption among women of childbearing age in the United States and Puerto Rico.

The relative impact of violation type and lie severity on judgments of message deceitfulness

This paper is part of a larger program of research assessing variables that underlie quantitative deceptiveness ratings. Several recent theoretical approaches, including Information Manipulation Theory (IMT), propose that deceptive messages are best understood as varying along two or more dimensions. At the same time, researchers have increasingly moved from dichotomous deception judgments to continuous deception ratings. This paper questions the validity of scaling degrees of deceptiveness along a single dimension, and argues that gradations in perceived deceptiveness reflect both the type of information manipulated and the severity of the consequences of the deception. This reasoning was tested with alxl experiment (N = 236) in which both the type of information manipulated and the severity of the consequences were systematically varied. As predicted, the results suggest that false messages (i.e., quality violations) are rated as more deceptive than lies of omission (i.e., quantity violations) when lie severity is low, but this difference diminishes as lie severity increases. In other words, false messages were rated as deceptive regardless of severity, but messages omitting information were rated as deceptive as false messages only when the consequences were serious. The implications for measuring deception are discussed.

The Relationship between Narrative Content Variation, Affective and Cognitive Reactions, and a Person's Willingness to Sign an Organ Donor Card

This study predicted that variations in the content of a narrative organ donor appeal (i.e., the age of the donor, the age of the person whose life was saved, the donors cause of death, and the number of people whose lives were saved) would have a differential impact on a persons affective and cognitive reactions to that message, which would in turn influence a persons attitude toward signing an organ donor card. Two hundred sixty-eight individuals who had not signed an organ donor card previously read one of several narratives and then answered a series of questions designed to measure their attitudes toward signing an organ donor card. These data revealed that how a person dies (accident vs natural causes) and the number of people who are saved through organ donation indirectly influence a persons attitude toward signing an organ donor card with vividness, sympathy, and happiness acting as mediating variables. These findings and their implications are discussed.This study predicted that variations in the content of a narrative organ donor appeal (i.e., the age of the donor, the age of the person whose life was saved, the donors cause of death, and the number of people whose lives were saved) would have a differential impact on a persons affective and cognitive reactions to that message, which would in turn influence a persons attitude toward signing an organ donor card. Two hundred sixty-eight individuals who had not signed an organ donor card previously read one of several narratives and then answered a series of questions designed to measure their attitudes toward signing an organ donor card. These data revealed that how a person dies (accident vs natural causes) and the number of people who are saved through organ donation indirectly influence a persons attitude toward signing an organ donor card with vividness, sympathy, and happiness acting as mediating variables. These findings and their implications are discussed.