Healthcare messages can promote health behaviors to detect disease. Alternatively, healthcare messages can encourage behaviors to prevent disease. This research examines how emotions enhance or hinder the effectiveness of disease prevention or detection advocacies. Across several emotions and different health scenarios, we find converging evidence of the results. [to cite]

Chethana Achar

Meng-Hua Hsieh

Nidhi Agrawal

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ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH 
 
Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 
 
 
Health Messages: the Roles of Emotions and Type of Healthcare Advocacies
Meng-Hua Hsieh, Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg, USA 
Chethana Achar, University of Washington, USA 
Nidhi Agrawal, University of Washington, USA 
 
Healthcare messages can promote health behaviors to detect disease. Alternatively, healthcare messages can encourage behaviors to
prevent disease. This research examines how emotions enhance or hinder the effectiveness of disease prevention or detection
advocacies. Across several emotions and different health scenarios, we find converging evidence of the results.
 
 
[to cite]:
Meng-Hua Hsieh, Chethana Achar, and Nidhi Agrawal (2016) ,"Health Messages: the Roles of Emotions and Type of Healthcare
Advocacies", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 44, eds. Page Moreau and Stefano Puntoni, Duluth, MN :
Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 486-487.
 
[url]:
http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1022221/volumes/v44/NA-44
 
[copyright notice]:
This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in
part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.
486 
Advances in Consumer Research
Volume 44, ©2016
Health Messages: The Roles of Emotions and Type of Healthcare Advocacies
Donna Hoffman, George Washington University, USA
Tom Novak, George Washington University, USA
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Emotions can influence how individuals process health informa-
tion such as anti-drinking messages (Agrawal and Duhachek 2010) 
and self-focused or family-focused health appeals (Agrawal, Menon, 
and Aaker 2007). Healthcare messages can promote health behaviors 
to detect disease, such as doing breast self-examinations to detect 
breast cancer (Meyerowitz and Chaiken 1987). Alternatively, health-
care messages can encourage behaviors to prevent disease, such 
as using sunscreen to prevent skin cancer (Detweiler et al. 1999). 
Despite this abundance of literature on how emotions can influence 
the persuasiveness of health messages, there is a lack of studies that 
investigate how incidental emotions enhance or hinder the effective-
ness of prevention or detection advocacies. This research is designed 
to close this gap. 
Research has shown that individuals perceive detection be-
haviors as more risky than prevention behaviors because detection 
behaviors involve the risk of finding out whether they are ill. In con-
trast, prevention behaviors can maintain one’s current health state 
and have little, if any, shortcomings (Rothman et al. 1999). Risk 
perceptions associated with prevention and detection behaviors in-
fluence the persuasiveness of framed appeals. Studies have clearly 
established the links between emotions and health risk perceptions 
(Keller, Lipkus, and Rimer 2003). However, individuals experience 
different emotions, so incidental emotions may lead individuals to 
differently evaluate prevention and detection advocacies, which dif-
fer in risk level. Emotional certainty is related to risk-seeking pro-
pensity and optimism; therefore, it can influence how consumers 
evaluate prevention and detection advocacies.
Some emotions are associated with certainty, while others are 
associated with uncertainty (Smith and Ellsworth 1985). Emotion 
shapes how individuals process information through appraisals 
related to certainty. Previous research has also examined the effects 
of emotional certainty on consumer judgment and decision making. 
Sad individuals prefer high-risk, high-reward choices while anxious 
individuals prefer low-risk, low-reward choices, because sadness is 
associated with high certainty appraisal tendencies while anxiety is 
associated with high uncertainty appraisal tendencies (Raghunathan 
and Pham 1999). Both positive and negative emotional states can 
influence judgment and information processing. Positive affect helps 
process health-threatening messages for individuals vulnerable to 
health risks but not for those with low vulnerability, while negative 
affect has no impact on health message processing regardless of 
vulnerability (Das and Fennis 2008). 
Despite a lot of recent work on emotions, we have little under-
standing of how emotional certainty interacts with emotional valence 
to jointly influence persuasiveness of health messages.  Whether the 
effects differ by the nature of health advocacy is unknown. We ex-
pect that for certainty emotions, negative emotions lead to greater 
persuasiveness of detection advocacies than positive emotions. Con-
versely, for feelings of uncertainty, positive emotions compared with 
negative emotions aid the effectiveness of detection advocacies. 
However, certainty and valence do not exert an influence on the ef-
fectiveness of prevention advocacies. 
Two studies using different health contexts tested these ex-
pectations. In study 1, we selected four emotions differing on the 
dimensions of pleasant/unpleasant and certain/uncertain (Smith and 
Ellsworth 1985). Participants were asked to think of a life event that 
they had experienced that made them feel proud (positive emotion 
associated with certainty), angry (negative emotion associated with 
certainty), surprised (positive emotion associated with uncertainty), 
or anxious (negative emotion associated with uncertainty). Next, par-
ticipants read information about either (1) a mouth rinse that could 
help prevent plaque accumulation or (2) a disclosing rinse that could 
help detect areas of plaque accumulation (Rothman et al. 1999). 
Participants rated their intention of using the advocated oral 
rinse. The results indicated that after viewing a detection advocacy, 
participants who felt angry were more persuaded by the advocacy 
than those who felt proud. In contrast, for a detection advocacy, par-
ticipants who felt surprised were more persuaded by the advocacy 
than those who felt anxious. After participants viewed a prevention 
advocacy, they were equally persuaded regardless of whether they 
experienced positive or negative emotion or whether they experi-
enced emotions associated with high certainty or high uncertainty. 
To test the robustness of the findings of Study 1, in Study 2 we 
use a different product and different emotions to manipulate emo-
tional valence and emotional certainty. Participants were asked to 
think of a life event that they had experienced that made them feel 
happy (positive emotion associated with certainty), hopeful (positive 
emotion associated with uncertainty), disgusted (negative emotion 
associated with certainty), or anxious (negative emotion associated 
with uncertainty). Participants read information about either a skin 
lotion that helps prevent skin cancer or a skin lotion that helps detect 
skin cancer for the detection advocacy. All participants read the same 
basic information about skin cancer. Participants were asked to an-
swer true/false questions based on the pamphlet they read about facts 
on skin cancer (Menon, Block, and Ramanathan 2002).The results 
revealed that after viewing a detection advocacy, participants who 
felt disgusted had higher quiz scores than those who felt happy. In 
contrast, after viewing a detection advocacy, participants who felt 
hopeful scored higher than those who felt anxious. For the prevention 
advocacy, participants were equally persuaded regardless of whether 
they experienced a positive emotion or negative emotion or whether 
the emotion was associated with high certainty or high uncertainty.
Taken together, this investigation identifies a relationship be-
tween emotion and the effectiveness of prevention and detection ad-
vocacy. To our knowledge, our research is the first to demonstrate 
the role of specific emotions in persuasiveness of prevention and de-
tection advocacy. We extend the literature on emotions by focusing 
on the role of emotional certainty. Our research has implications for 
direct-to-consumer advertising and public policy.
REFERENCES
Agrawal, Nidhi and Adam Duhachek (2010), “Emotional 
Compatibility and the Effectiveness of Antidrinking Messages: 
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Agrawal, Nidhi, Geeta Menon, and Jennifer L. Aaker (2007), 
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Das, Enny and Bob M. Fennis (2008), “In the Mood to Face the 
Facts: When a Positive Mood Promotes Systematic Processing 
of Self-Threatening Information,” Motivation and Emotion, 32 
(3), 221–30.
Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 44) / 487
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Health Messages: the Roles of Emotions and Type of Healthcare Advocacies

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Health Messages: the Roles of Emotions and Type of Healthcare Advocacies

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