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Vaccines Jun 2024This systematic review of 54 cross-disciplinary peer-reviewed causal empirical studies helps public health officials, researchers, and healthcare professionals better... (Review)
Review
This systematic review of 54 cross-disciplinary peer-reviewed causal empirical studies helps public health officials, researchers, and healthcare professionals better comprehend the effects of fear appeals in vaccine promotional campaigns on message processing, persuasion, vaccination attitudes, and vaccination intentions. This review documents inconsistent findings across studies, which it attempts to clarify by considering differences in research designs, sample populations, and outcomes measured. In general, we find that fear appeals increase risk perceptions, message involvement, and vaccination attitudes. However, fear appeals have less influence on vaccination intentions, especially among female and general adult populations or populations from the U.S. and other Western cultures. On the other hand, the effect of fear appeals on vaccination intentions is stronger among student populations and those from China (People's Republic of China and Hong Kong) and other non-Western cultures. Also, fear appeals are less persuasive when promoting COVID-19 vaccines and boosters than they are for other vaccines (e.g., HPV, influenza, MMR). Future research should compare fear appeal effectiveness in messages across vaccines or when combined with other executional elements, such as the endorser or type of evidence provided. Finally, future studies should explore other methodological approaches and measure underexplored message outcomes, such as vaccine uptake behavior, in more naturalistic settings.
PubMed: 38932382
DOI: 10.3390/vaccines12060653 -
Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) Jun 2024Many middle-aged and older adults (MAOAs) do not engage in sufficient physical activity (PA), despite its well-documented benefits for healthy aging. Existing PA...
Many middle-aged and older adults (MAOAs) do not engage in sufficient physical activity (PA), despite its well-documented benefits for healthy aging. Existing PA interventions often fail to reach or engage the target population effectively. This study investigates MAOAs' preferences for recruitment strategies to optimize the reach and uptake of PA interventions, thereby enhancing their impact on healthy aging and public health. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 39 MAOA participants (69% female, mean age = 69.46, SD = 7.07), guided by McGuire's Theory on Persuasive Communication. Factors related to the source, message content, channel, receiver characteristics and target behavior of recruitment strategies were analyzed. Our findings suggest a preference for trustworthy sources (e.g., healthcare professionals over commercial entities) and positive, non-ageist messaging. MAOAs vary in their channel preferences but emphasize the importance of personalization. Despite heterogeneity, MAOAs commonly perceive themselves as sufficiently active, indicating a need for improved knowledge on what constitutes sufficient PA, as well as easy enrollment or trying out interventions. Tailoring recruitment strategies to diverse MAOA segments based on age seems crucial for effective engagement. Future research could explore quantitative research into how communication factors relate to various target population characteristics.
PubMed: 38920436
DOI: 10.3390/geriatrics9030080 -
BMC Public Health Jun 2024The current study analyzed articles shared on Facebook between 2019 and 2021 that discuss the HPV vaccine. Results address a gap in knowledge about the persuasive...
BACKGROUND
The current study analyzed articles shared on Facebook between 2019 and 2021 that discuss the HPV vaccine. Results address a gap in knowledge about the persuasive strategies used in HPV vaccine discourse on Facebook.
METHODS
Using Buzzsumo.com, we collected 138 articles, shared on Facebook between 2019 and 2021, with the highest "engagement scores," or total number of reactions, comments, and shares. Using a content analysis methodology, three independent coders were trained in using the study codebook, achieved acceptable inter-rater reliability (Krippendorf's alpha = 0.811), and coded each article in Atlas.ti.
RESULTS
Seventy-two articles had a positive valence toward the HPV vaccine, 48 had a negative valence, and 18 were mixed-valence or neutral. Pro-vaccine articles presented a variety of evidence types in support of benefits of HPV vaccination. Pro-vaccine articles primarily originated from national and local news sources. Anti-vaccine articles combined presentation of evidence with persuasive arguments and strategies, such as mistrust of institutions, fear appeals, ideological appeals, presenting a high number of arguments or detail, and minimizing the severity of HPV. Three sources were responsible for producing 62.5% of all anti-vaccine articles in the dataset. Mixed-valence or neutral articles mixed cancer prevention discourse with ideological appeals about protecting parental rights, and were mostly produced by local news outlets.
CONCLUSION
The results of this study can help health communicators anticipate the types of discourses that vaccine-hesitant parents may have encountered online. Implications and suggestions for practice are discussed.
Topics: Humans; Papillomavirus Vaccines; Social Media; Persuasive Communication; Papillomavirus Infections; Female; Vaccination
PubMed: 38915043
DOI: 10.1186/s12889-024-19099-0 -
JMIR Cardio Jun 2024Behavior change support systems (BCSSs) have the potential to help people maintain healthy lifestyles and aid in the self-management of coronary heart disease (CHD). The... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
Behavior change support systems (BCSSs) have the potential to help people maintain healthy lifestyles and aid in the self-management of coronary heart disease (CHD). The Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) model is a framework for designing and evaluating systems designed to support lifestyle modifications and health behavior change using information and communication technology. However, evidence for the underlying design principles behind BCSSs for CHD has not been extensively reported in the literature.
OBJECTIVE
This scoping review aims to identify existing health BCSSs for CHD, report the characteristics of these systems, and describe the persuasion context and persuasive design principles of these systems based on the PSD framework.
METHODS
Using the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines, 3 digital databases (Scopus, Web of Science, and MEDLINE) were searched between 2010 to 2022. The major inclusion criteria for studies were in accordance with the PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome) approach.
RESULTS
Searches conducted in the databases identified 1195 papers, among which 30 were identified as eligible for the review. The most interesting characteristics of the BCSSs were the predominant use of primary task support principles, followed by dialogue support and credibility support and the sparing use of social support principles. Theories of behavior change such as the Social Cognitive Theory and Self-Efficacy Theory were used often to underpin these systems. However, significant trends in the use of persuasive system features on par with behavior change theories could not be established from the reviewed studies. This points to the fact that there is still no theoretical consensus on how best to design interventions to promote behavior change in patients with CHD.
CONCLUSIONS
Our results highlight key software features for designing BCSSs for the prevention and management of CHD. We encourage designers of behavior change interventions to evaluate the techniques that contributed to the success of the intervention. Future research should focus on evaluating the effectiveness of the interventions, persuasive design principles, and behavior change theories using research methodologies such as meta-analysis.
PubMed: 38896840
DOI: 10.2196/49515 -
Radiology Jun 2024
Topics: Humans; Glymphatic System; Sleep Apnea Syndromes; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Brainwashing
PubMed: 38888475
DOI: 10.1148/radiol.241440 -
The Journal of Social Psychology Jun 2024Risk communication involves conveying potential risks to the audience. It's crucial for shaping behavior and influencing individual well-being. Previous research...
Risk communication involves conveying potential risks to the audience. It's crucial for shaping behavior and influencing individual well-being. Previous research predominantly focused on verbal and written aspects of risk communication, with less emphasis on nonverbal cues like vocal tone. Addressing this gap, our study explores the impact of competent and warm vocal tones on risk communication across two risky decision-making paradigms, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) in Study 1 and the Gambling Task in Study 2. Results show that competent and warm vocal tones are more persuasive than neutral tones, and their effectiveness varies in different decision-making scenarios. Additionally, participants' perceived competence and warmth of vocal tones mediate this persuasiveness. This study enhances our theoretical understanding of risk communication by incorporating the impact of vocal tones. Also, it carries practical implications for marketers and practitioners, demonstrating the importance of using voice as a medium to persuade in real-world scenarios.
PubMed: 38884469
DOI: 10.1080/00224545.2024.2368015 -
Journal of the American Medical... Jun 2024The main objectives of this research are (1) to uniquely design assistive behaviors for socially assistive robots using the principles of persuasion from behavioral...
OBJECTIVES
The main objectives of this research are (1) to uniquely design assistive behaviors for socially assistive robots using the principles of persuasion from behavioral psychology, and (2) to investigate caregivers' perspectives and opinions on the use of these behaviors to engage and motivate older adults in cognitive activities.
DESIGN
We developed 10 unique robot persuasive assistive behavior strategies for the social robot Pepper using both verbal and nonverbal communication modes. Robot verbal behaviors were designed using Cialdini's principles of persuasion; nonverbal behaviors included expansive movements of the body. Care providers' perceptions of the quality, strength, and persuasiveness of these robot persuasive behaviors were assessed based on the Perceived Argument Strength Likert scale.
SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS
Eighteen formal and informal care providers caring for older adults including those living with mild cognitive impairments participated.
METHODS
An online survey was designed consisting of short videos of the Pepper robot displaying each behavior. After viewing each video, care providers completed the Perceived Argument Strength Likert scale to evaluate 6 attributes for each behavior. They also provided comments.
RESULTS
Results show robot assistive behaviors using praise with emotion, along with emotion with commitment were the most positively rated by care providers. Qualitative responses indicate robot body language and speech quality were influencing factors in how a person perceives assistance in human-robot interactions.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Our findings provide new insights into incorporating persuasive strategies into the design of assistive social robot behaviors with the aim of engaging and motivating older adults in an activity. The majority of care providers rated the robot persuasive behaviors positively. In designing a persuasive socially assistive robot for older adults, it is beneficial to display a combination of persuasive strategies, such as praise and commitment with emotion, to address individual users' needs and cognitive levels.
PubMed: 38880121
DOI: 10.1016/j.jamda.2024.105084 -
Scientific Reports Jun 2024The Islamist group ISIS has been particularly successful at recruiting Westerners as terrorists. A hypothesized explanation is their simultaneous use of two types of...
The Islamist group ISIS has been particularly successful at recruiting Westerners as terrorists. A hypothesized explanation is their simultaneous use of two types of propaganda: Heroic narratives, emphasizing individual glory, alongside Social narratives, which emphasize oppression against Islamic communities. In the current study, functional MRI was used to measure brain responses to short ISIS propaganda videos distributed online. Participants were shown 4 Heroic and 4 Social videos categorized as such by another independent group of subjects. Persuasiveness was measured using post-scan predictions of recruitment effectiveness. Inter-subject correlation (ISC) was used to measure commonality of brain activity time courses across individuals. ISCs in ventral striatum predicted rated persuasiveness for Heroic videos, while ISCs in mentalizing and default networks, especially in dmPFC, predicted rated persuasiveness for Social videos. This work builds on past findings that engagement of the reward circuit and of mentalizing brain regions predicts preferences and persuasion. The observed dissociation as a function of stimulus type is novel, as is the finding that intersubject synchrony in ventral striatum predicts rated persuasiveness. These exploratory results identify possible neural mechanisms by which political extremists successfully recruit prospective members and specifically support the hypothesized distinction between Heroic and Social narratives for ISIS propaganda.
Topics: Humans; Male; Female; Adult; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Reward; Young Adult; Brain; Persuasive Communication; Islam; Mentalization; Brain Mapping; Ventral Striatum; Video Recording; Theory of Mind
PubMed: 38862592
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-62341-3 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Jun 2024Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have raised the prospect of scalable, automated, and fine-grained political microtargeting on a scale previously...
Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have raised the prospect of scalable, automated, and fine-grained political microtargeting on a scale previously unseen; however, the persuasive influence of microtargeting with LLMs remains unclear. Here, we build a custom web application capable of integrating self-reported demographic and political data into GPT-4 prompts in real-time, facilitating the live creation of unique messages tailored to persuade individual users on four political issues. We then deploy this application in a preregistered randomized control experiment ( = 8,587) to investigate the extent to which access to individual-level data increases the persuasive influence of GPT-4. Our approach yields two key findings. First, messages generated by GPT-4 were broadly persuasive, in some cases increasing support for an issue stance by up to 12 percentage points. Second, in aggregate, the persuasive impact of microtargeted messages was not statistically different from that of non-microtargeted messages (4.83 vs. 6.20 percentage points, respectively, = 0.226). These trends hold even when manipulating the type and number of attributes used to tailor the message. These findings suggest-contrary to widespread speculation-that the influence of current LLMs may reside not in their ability to tailor messages to individuals but rather in the persuasiveness of their generic, nontargeted messages. We release our experimental dataset, , as an empirical baseline for future research.
Topics: Politics; Humans; Persuasive Communication; Language
PubMed: 38848300
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2403116121 -
Journal of Health Communication Jun 2024Masspersonal communication has emerged as a compelling alternative persuasive approach in response to the widespread use of social media. It is crucial to comprehend how...
Masspersonal communication has emerged as a compelling alternative persuasive approach in response to the widespread use of social media. It is crucial to comprehend how observing online interpersonal interactions regarding the fear appeal of climate change can foster pro-environmental behaviors among users. This study examines the effects of vicarious message interactivity in promoting actions against climate change and the underlying mechanisms behind this effect. The results of an online experiment conducted in China ( = 236) revealed that psychological reactance and message elaboration mediated the effects of vicarious message interactivity on behavioral intention in a serial indirect effect. In comparison to static fear appeal, interactive fear appeal proves effective in reducing psychological reactance, promoting message elaboration, and ultimately increasing intention to take actions against climate change. Our findings not only contribute to the literature on interactive communication but also provide insights for environmental-health campaigns on social media.
Topics: Humans; Climate Change; Fear; Male; Female; Persuasive Communication; China; Social Media; Health Communication; Intention; Young Adult; Adult; Health Promotion
PubMed: 38836440
DOI: 10.1080/10810730.2024.2360025