Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Abstraction in Decisionmaking and Message Effectiveness

与某些行为相关的负面健康结果，如吸烟，发生在遥远的未来，因此被认为是抽象的。寻求传达这些成果的信息面临两个挑战。首先，这些信息的接收者并不关注这些长期的、抽象的后果。第二，这些信息往往威胁到选择的自由，并产生心理上的反感，因此个体试图通过拒绝这些信息来重新建立控制。这一系列的研究扩展了风险认知，抽象，威胁自由选择，和信息有效性之间的理论关系，通过测试的命题，即当高风险的信息处理更抽象，在高conciliation水平的方向，他们是更有效的，因为个人是专注于长期的，抽象的健康目标，因为心理电抗较低。具体而言，本项目将开发、测试和验证一种移动终端游戏，该游戏可以将用户转移到高接触水平，从而提高高风险信息的有效性。这种方法是跨学科的，整合了沟通，心理学和人机交互领域。移动的说服性应用程序用于引导人们做出理想的行为选择，如停止吸烟，吃健康的食物，管理金钱，回收水瓶，参加社区志愿者机会，锻炼，完成家庭作业。这项工作将有助于指导这些应用程序的实践者和设计者，增加对什么类型的认知任务和信息将最成功地提高信息的有效性和期望的行为选择的理解。总的来说，这项研究有助于增加我们对如何开发和传递信息的理解，使它们达到预期的效果。

The negative health outcomes associated with some behaviors, such as cigarette smoking, occur far into the future and are therefore perceived as abstract. Messages that seek to communicate these outcomes face two challenges. First, the recipients of these messages are not focused on these long-term, abstract, consequences. Second, the messages often threaten freedom of choice and generate psychological reactance, so the individual seeks to reestablish control by rejecting the messages. This series of studies extends the theoretical relationships between risk perceptions, abstraction, threat to freedom of choice, and message effectiveness by testing the proposition that when high risk messages are processed more abstractly, at a high construal level orientation, they are more effective because the individual is focused on long-term, abstract health goals and because psychological reactance is lower. Specifically, this project will develop, test, and validate a mobile device game that can shift the user to a high construal level orientation, thereby improving the effectiveness of high risk messages. This approach is interdisciplinary, integrating the domains of communication, psychology and human computer interactions.Mobile persuasive applications are used to guide people toward making desirable behavioral choices, such as stopping cigarette use, eating healthier food, managing money, recycling their water bottles, participating in community volunteer opportunities, exercising, and completing homework. This work will help to guide practitioners and designers of these applications, increasing understanding of what types of cognitive tasks and messages will most successfully increase message effectiveness and desired behavioral choice. Overall, this study contributes to increasing our understanding of how to develop and deliver messages so they have their intended effect.