Punam Anand Keller

When to accentuate the negative: The effects of perceived efficacy and message framing on intentions to perform a health-related behavior.

The authors explore the relationship between perceived efficacy, depth of processing, and message framing. They conduct two experiments on varying health-related issues: sexually transmitted diseas...

Value from Regulatory Construal Fit: The Persuasive Impact of Fit between Consumer Goals and Message Concreteness

This research investigates the relationship between regulatory focus and construal level. The findings indicate that promotion-focused individuals are more likely to construe information at abstract, high levels, whereas those with a prevention focus are more likely to construe information at concrete, low levels (experiments 1 and 2). Further, such fit (vs. nonfit) between an individuals regulatory focus and the construal level at which information is represented leads to more favorable attitudes (experiments 3 and 4) and enhances performance on a subsequent task (experiment 3). These outcomes occur because fit enhances engagement that in turn induces processing fluency and intensifies reactions. (c) 2009 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Increasing the Persuasiveness of Fear Appeals: The Effect of Arousal and Elaboration

We investigate the conditions under which messages that prompt low and high levels of fear are likely to be effective. Our premise is that when a low level of fear is ineffective, it is because there is insufficient elaboration of the harmful consequences of engaging in the destructive behavior. By contrast, when appeals arousing high levels of fear are ineffective, it is because too much elaboration on the harmful consequences interferes with processing of the recommended change in behavior. We find support for these expectations in the context of a communication advocating that people stop smoking. The elaboration-enhancing interventions used, self-reference and imagery processing, increased the persuasiveness of a low-fear appeal by prompting elaboration on the harmful consequences of smoking, whereas the use of two elaboration-suppressing interventions, reference to others and objective processing, increased the persuasiveness of a high-fear appeal by decreasing the extent to which consumers deny harmful consequences. Copyright 1996 by the University of Chicago.

Vividness Effects: A Resource-Matching Perspective

The authors present a resource-matching perspective to explain the relationship between vividness and persuasion. Three experiments confirm the predicted inverted-U relationship between resource allocation and persuasion for vivid information, and a positive linear relationship between resource allocation and persuasion for nonvivid information when vivid information is less resource demanding than nonvivid information. This persuasion pattern is reversed in experiment 4, where nonvivid information is less resource demanding than vivid information; that is, there is an inverted-U relationship for nonvivid information, and a positive linear relationship for vivid information. The contrasting persuasion functions for vivid and nonvivid information can predict when vivid information will be more versus less persuasive than nonvivid information. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.

Designing Effective Health Communications: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis of health communications examines the influence of 22 tactics and six individual characteristics on intentions to comply with health recommendations. The analysis indicates that message tactics have a significant influence on intentions toward health-related recommendations even after the authors account for individual differences. In addition, the authors examine when message tactics interact with individual characteristics to determine intentions. The results, which are based on 60 studies involving nearly 22,500 participants, show that there is significant opportunity to tailor health communications more efficiently to different market segments.

Regulatory Focus and Efficacy of Health Messages

Two studies support the premise that a persons regulatory focus determines the salience of self-efficacy (perceived ease) or response efficacy (perceived effectiveness) of health behaviors. The findings indicate greater regulatory-efficacy fit (experiment 1) and higher intentions to perform the advocated behaviors (experiment 2) when self-efficacy features are paired with promotion focus and when response efficacy features are paired with prevention focus. The data support the premise that self-efficacy is weighed more than response efficacy when the regulatory focus is promotion, whereas the reverse is true in prevention regulatory focus. (c) 2006 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Informing Women About Their Breast Cancer Risks: Truth and Consequences

We assessed the extent to which informing women about their risk for breast cancer affected their perceived 10-year and lifetime risks for getting breast cancer, their emotional reactions toward getting breast cancer, and their intentions to get mammograms. In a pre- to posttest design, 121 women were given their 10-year risk of getting breast cancer with or without being compared with women their age and race at lowest risk. Womens perceptions of their 10-year risks became more congruent (i.e., more accurate) with their actual risk. Participants were more accurate when they received their own risk without being compared with women at lowest risk. Women who received only their own risk estimate reported being at lower risk than other women. Overall, women reported that obtaining their 10-year risk estimate either did not affect or increased their intentions to get mammograms. These results suggest that giving women their individual risk of getting breast cancer improves accuracy while also enhancing their feelings that they are at lower risk than other women. Counter to many theories of health behavior, reducing womens perceived risk of breast cancer did not lower their intentions to get mammograms. Implications for the communication of breast cancer risk are discussed.

Converting the unconverted : The effect of inclination and opportunity to discount health-related fear appeals

Two experiments indicated that the conventional wisdom for designing fear appeals, higher fear arousal, and a consequences-recommendations ordering, was more persuasive for adherents, or those who were already following the advocated recommendations. Instead, lowering the level of fear arousal and reversing the order of the consequences and recommendations were more effective for persuading the unconverted. The unconverted were more persuaded by the latter message format because it reduced the level of message discounting. Specifically, unconverted participants who received either a low fear appeal or recommendations preceding consequences perceived themselves to be more susceptible, perceived the consequences as more severe, regarded the recommendations as more efficacious, believed they were more able to follow the recommendations, and were less likely to refute the message claims.

Differences in the relative influence of product attributes under alternative processing conditions: Attribute importance versus attribute ease of imagability

We present two experiments that test whether ease of imagability can shift the influence of a product attribute without affecting its assessed importance in the decision. Results of the experiments indicate that more easily imagined attributes may have a disproportionate influence when subjects use imagery in the evaluation, but not when they engage in more analytical processing. Experiments 1 and 2 differ in the manner in which method of evaluation (imagery based vs. nonimagery based) was manipulated. In Experiment 1, use of imagery was manipulated through explicit instructions to either engage in or refrain from using imagery, whereas use of imagery was manipulated in Experiment 2 by varying the overall value of the alternatives. Results of Experiment 2 indicate that subjects who were asked to evaluate alternatives that were described in generally positive terms used imagery in the evaluation, placing greater emphasis on the easily imagined attributes, whereas subjects who were asked to evaluate alternatives that were described in generally negative terms or mixed positive and negative terms did not use imagery, basing their evaluations on attribute importance. Our findings support the hypothesis that consumers may at times evaluate alternatives by using an imagery heuristic , which involves imagining the actual experience with an alternative and assessing the desirability of the alternative according to the affective response to this imagined experience.

Depressive Realism and Health Risk Accuracy: The Negative Consequences of Positive Mood

We examine the role of level of depression on updating of health-related risk estimates. Participants provided their risk of getting breast cancer before (baseline) and after (follow-up) receiving personalized (experiment 1) or standard (experiment 2) medical risk feedback. Although there were no significant differences in risk estimates at baseline, the follow-up risk estimates indicate that compared to nondepressives, depressives lowered their risk estimates such that they were more accurate or closer to the medical estimates provided in the risk feedback. In contrast to depressives, nondepressives with higher baseline risk estimates did not revise their follow-up risk estimates because they were in a positive mood after receiving the risk feedback.