The Impact Of Message Framing And Audience’s Experience On Persuasion

Previous studies have found that two message framing derived from prospect theory,the gain-framed message and the loss-framed message,are effective in enhancing the persuasiveness of messages and thus changing people’s cognition and behaviors.However,there has been no consistent conclusion as to which of the two framed messages has better persuasive effects.The social cognitive account of message framing suggests that people’s receptivity of the particular frame advocated by a message may depend on their experience and current situation.Previous research has also found that individualized persuasion techniques,in which the characteristics of the persuasive message and the persuasive approach are changed according to the characteristics of the audience,are more likely to be successful than standardized "one-size-fits-all" strategies.Therefore,this study investigates whether the experience of the audience affects the persuasive effect of message framing and the psychological and neural mechanisms behind it by collecting behavioral and brain data through two experiments,introducing social cognition theory and with the help the hyper-scanning technique based on functional near-infrared imaging device(f NIRS).Experiment 1 used dental floss as the persuasive theme,and intention change before and after the persuaders’ experiment as the persuasive indicator.A repeated measures between-subjects experimental design of 2(message framing: gain-framed message /loss-framed message × 2(audience’s experience: with/without)was used to investigate whether audience’ experience affects the persuasive effect of message framing at the intention level.Results revealed a significant interaction effect between audience experience and message framing after excluding the effects of life orientation and emotion;specifically,as intention change for inexperienced audience,the gain-framed message changed their intention to floss more compared to the lossframed message;however,for those with experience in flossing,compared to the gain-framed message,the loss-framed message changed their intention to floss more than the other one.Experiment 2,based on Experiment 1,simulated a realistic persuasion scenario by using the audience’s behavioral change before and after the experiment as the main persuasion indicator,and introduced social cognition theory,f NIRS to focus on whether the audience’s experience and message framing also jointly influence behavior change.The results found that after excluding the effects of motivational orientation,life orientation,and emotional baseline,there was a significant interaction effect between the audience’s experience and message framing in terms of behavior,with specific patterns consistent with intentions.The analysis of mediating effects with moderation suggests that the effect of message framing on behavior change can be mediated by changes in outcome expectations,changes in self-efficacy,and changes in intentions in social cognition theory,and that the audience’s experience will play a moderating role in the above mediation effect.Specifically,for inexperienced audience,the effect of message framing on behavior change through the chain mediation of outcome expectation change or self-efficacy change and intention change.Alternatively,the message framing can directly influence behavior change through the mediation of outcome expectation change or self-efficacy change.However,for the experienced audience,the change in behavior by the message framing will only be mediated by the change in intention.At the neural level,for inexperienced audience,the gain-framed message elicited significant activation in middle frontal gyrus compared to the loss-framed message.However,for experienced audience,the gain-framed message elicited a weaker activation in their middle frontal gyrus compared to the loss-framed message.Moreover,for all audience,activation in middle frontal gyrus was significantly and positively correlated with subsequent changes in intention and behavior,with stronger activation being associated with stronger subsequent changes in intention and behavior.The results of the Interpersonal neural synchronization analysis showed that the brain synchronization between persuaders and audience in the prefrontal cortex(PFC),right temporoparietal junction(r TPJ),and left temporoparietal junction(l TPJ)areas was significantly higher in the loss-framed message condition than in the gain-framed message condition,and there was a significant positive correlation between interpersonal brain synchrony in the right middle frontal gyrus and subsequent intention change for both persuaders and audience in the loss-framed message condition.In summary,the conclusions of this study are as follows: both at the intentional and behavioral levels,the message framing and the experience of the audience will jointly influence persuasion.The audience’s experience will influence the psychological foundation by which the message framing changes their behavior.For inexperienced audience,change in outcome expectation,change in self-efficacy,and change in intention are the psychological foundation by which the message framing induces their behavior change.However,for experienced audience,intention change was the psychological foundation by which the message framing induced behavior change.Audience’ s experience influenced the persuasive effect of message framing in relation to activation of the left middle frontal gyrus,and interpersonal brain synchronization was able to characterize the message framing effect.These findings deepen our understanding of the impact of message framing on persuasion at the theoretical level and provide useful insights for public health professionals and health workers to use message framing to represent persuasive messages for different populations to achieve better persuasive outcomes at the practical level.