Optimizing the persuasiveness of dietary messages: The roles of framing, tailoring, and self-conscious emotion

Poor dietary decisions are major risk factors for chronic illness and mortality. Although behavioral interventions designed to prevent these negative health outcomes have successfully improved dietary behavior, there is still room for improvement. The current research sought to inform the design of future dietary interventions by generating knowledge regarding (1) the strategic framing of message content, (2) the tailoring of messages to recipients, and (3) the links between emotion and persuasion. Five studies were conducted using experimental designs. Study One demonstrated that dietary attitudes were more favorable following exposure to a prescriptive message (i.e., what one should do) compared to a proscriptive message (i.e., what one shouldn't do). Additionally, this study provided evidence that shame-proneness was negatively related to message attitudes although guilt-proneness was positively related. Study Two replicated the effect observed in the first study while demonstrating that message involvement mediated the process. This study also revealed that state shame and guilt elicited by the messages predicted attitudes (as well as message credibility) in a manner consistent with that observed in the prior experiment. Study Three extended the prior investigations by showing that proscriptive/prescriptive message framing interacted with dietary restraint to predict healthy food purchases made within a virtual grocery store. Study Four then revealed that seven-day vegetable consumption rates were higher following exposure to prescriptive messages that emphasized potential negative outcomes (e.g., loss-framed) compared prescriptive messages that emphasized potential positive outcomes (e.g., gain-framed), controlling for implicit negative and positive affect. Finally, Study Five demonstrated that tailoring loss/gain-framed messages to individual differences in future time perspective favorably influenced intentions to engage in healthy dietary behaviors. Taken together, the results of these experiments provide insight regarding how to best optimize the effectiveness of persuasive health communications.;Keywords: Message Framing, Message Tailoring, Dietary Decision-Making, Health Communication, Future Time Perspective, Dietary Restraint, Implicit Affect, Shame, Guilt, Virtual Environments.