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

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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.