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The effect of message framing on breast selfexamination attitudes, intentions and behaviour (1987)
| Venue: | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
| Citations: | 110 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Meyerowitz87theeffect,
author = {Beth E. Meyerowitz and Shelly Chaiken},
title = {The effect of message framing on breast selfexamination attitudes, intentions and behaviour},
journal = {Journal of Personality and Social Psychology},
year = {1987},
pages = {500--510}
}
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Abstract
In this study we tested the framing hypothesis that a pamphlet stressing the negative consequences of not performing breast self-examination (BSE) would be more persuasive than a pamphlet empha-sizing BSE's positive consequences. College-aged female subjects were exposed to a loss-frame pam-phlet, a gain-frame pamphlet, or a no-arguments pamphlet, or they received no pamphlet describing the importance of and the techniques for performing BSE. Attitudes toward BSE and intentions to perform BSE were assessed immediately after this intervention and again 4 months later. The follow-up also assessed subjects ' postexperi mental BSE behavior. Consistent with predictions, subjects who read a pamphlet with arguments framed in loss language manifested more positive BSE attitudes, intentions, and behaviors than did subjects in the other three conditions. The greater impact of the loss pamphlet could not be attributed to greater fear arousal, better memory for pamphlet content, greater perceived susceptibility to breast cancer, or stronger beliefs in BSE's efficacy on the part of the loss subjects. Only measures of perceived self-efficacy in performing BSE were differentially affected by the framing manipulation, with loss subjects reporting the greatest levels of self-confi-dence. The results are discussed in terms of prospect theory's framing postulate and a simpler nega-tivity-bias conceptualization, and underlying mechanisms such as differential salience and vividness
Keyphrases
breast selfexamination attitude loss subject framing hypothesis loss pamphlet prospect theory pamphlet content postexperi mental bse behavior no-arguments pamphlet loss language negative consequence fear arousal differential salience positive bse attitude loss-frame pam-phlet breast cancer college-aged female subject simpler nega-tivity-bias conceptualization framing manipulation gain-frame pamphlet pamphlet empha-sizing bse positive consequence
