PSY 283 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Prospect Theory, Health Promotion, Cognitive Dissonance
2 Feb 2019
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Document Summary
One of the biggest challenges facing health professionals is how to effectively persuade people to change their health-related behavior. Some health promotion messages simply provide the facts about a given behavior with the hope that giving people the information will motivate change. However, this is often not a sufficient motivator of behavior change. For example, most smokers are fully aware of the health consequences of smoking but continue to do it anyway. Some health promotion messages provide emotional, as opposed to rational, messages about the consequences of engaging in a given behavior. Some emotion-based messages use positive stimuli, like appealing messages and attractive people (like these people at a party not drinking and showing that not drinking can still be fun). In comparison to positive messages, negative messages are thought to be easier to understand, more quickly processed, and more accurately remembered. Recent research has suggested that fear-based appeals often aren"t effective (like dare)
