Bacteria as Bullies: Effects of Linguistic Agency Assignment in Health Message
Bacteria as Bullies: Effects of Linguistic Agency Assignment in Health Message
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DOI:
10.1080/10810730.2013.798383
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发表时间:
2014-03-01
影响因子:
4.4
通讯作者:
Dragojevic, Marko
中科院分区:
文献类型:
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作者:
Bell, Robert A.;Mcglone, Matthew S.;Dragojevic, Marko
When describing health threats, communicators can assign agency to the threat (e.g., Hepatitis C has infected 4 million Americans) or to humans (e.g., Four million Americans have contracted hepatitis C). In an online experiment, the authors explored how assignment of agency affects perceptions of susceptibility and severity of a health threat, response efficacy, self-efficacy, fear arousal, and intentions to adopt health-protective recommendations. Participants were 719 individuals recruited through Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com), a crowdsource labor market run by Amazon (www.amazon.com). The participants were assigned randomly to read 1 of 8 flyers defined by a 2x4 (Agency AssignmentxTopic) factorial design. Each flyer examined 1 health threat (E. coli, necrotizing fasciitis, salmonella, or Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae) and was written in language that emphasized bacterial or human agency. Perceived susceptibility and severity were highest when bacterial agency language was used. Response efficacy, self-efficacy, and fear arousal were not significantly affected by agency assignment. Participants reported stronger intentions to adopt recommendations when bacteria agency language was used, but this effect did not reach conventional standards of significance (p