CONSIDER THE DILEMMA

As a service-learning project, your life science class is organizing a health screening day on your campus. Medical professionals will be offering blood pressure checks, cholesterol and diabetes screening, and vaccinations. Students can complete a full health screening in about 15 minutes. Your instructor, Professor Griswold, created several student teams to support the event. Since you are majoring in public relations, you joined the event-promotion team.

Your team wants to develop a slogan to market the event. This tagline will help tie together all the promotional efforts, whether posted on Facebook, Twitter, or campus bulletin boards; printed on flyers; or passed on through face-to-face interactions. During your first team meeting, one member suggests that playing on fear is a good way to motivate students, saying, “I think we need to have a message that scares people. Something like, ‘Don’t be a zombie. Dying young is no joke. Attend the Health Screening Fair.’” Two other group members immediately vocalize their enthusiasm for the idea.

But you see it differently. Since your sophomore year of high school, you have had an annual physical exam. Your mother encouraged you and your sister to have regular checkups for peace of mind. In fact, one routine test showed a heart abnormality in your sister that was easily treated. This personal experience makes you believe the slogan should emphasize the positive benefits of health screenings rather than relying on scare tactics.

CONNECT THE RESEARCH

Whether television commercials, printed brochures, or social media campaigns, there are lots of persuasive messages designed to motivate you to take care of your health. These messages are so plentiful that communication scholars even study how health professionals develop messages to maximize persuasive effect.

One line of research looks at how the choice of positive or negative language in health messages influences receivers. Specifically, gain-framed messages use language that points out the benefits of taking care of your health (O’Keefe & Jensen, 2009). For example, a gain-framed message about getting a health screening would be, “If you have regular health checkups, you will enjoy peace of mind.” On the other hand, health messages using language that emphasizes the cost of not following good health practices are known as loss-framed messages (O’Keefe & Jensen, 2009). A loss-framed message about getting a health screening would be, “If you don’t have regular health checkups, you could die from a terminal disease that could’ve been treated if it was caught earlier.”

Several factors determine which approach is the better one to use. When you want to influence others to take preventive action to maintain good health, such as flossing daily, wearing sunscreen, or exercising regularly, gain-framed messages may be the most persuasive (Rothman, Bartels, Wlaschin, & Salovey, 2006). However, if your motivation is to convince others that routine tests—such as blood pressure checks, mammograms, or STD testing—will detect and lessen the impact of potential health problems, a loss-framed message may be best. In this case, you would want the health message to detail the risks of doing nothing (Rothman et al., 2006).

The success of either type of message frame is affected by individual differences. Receivers will respond differently to these appeals depending on their personality characteristics, motivation and interests, health history, and confidence in their own ability to follow health recommendations (Covey, 2012).

COMMUNICATE

Before making a communication choice, consider the facts of the situation, and think about the research on gain-framed and loss-framed health messages. Also, reflect on what you’ve learned so far about the elaboration likelihood model (pp. 436–438), the motivated sequence (pp. 442–445), and credibility (p. 439). Then answer these questions:

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