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

与吸烟等某些行为相关的负面健康后果将在遥远的未来发生，因此被认为是抽象的。试图传达这些结果的信息面临两个挑战。首先，这些信息的接受者并不关注这些长期的、抽象的结果。其次，这些信息经常威胁到选择的自由，并产生心理上的抗拒，因此个人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感知、抽象、对选择自由的威胁和信息有效性之间的理论关系，通过测试这样一个命题，即当高风险信息在高解释水平取向下被更抽象地处理时，它们更有效，因为个体专注于长期、抽象的健康目标，因为心理抗拒更低。具体来说，该项目将开发、测试和验证一款移动设备游戏，它可以将用户转移到高解释水平方向，从而提高高风险信息的有效性。这种方法是跨学科的，整合了通信，心理学和人机交互领域。移动劝导应用程序被用来引导人们做出理想的行为选择，比如戒烟、吃更健康的食物、管理金钱、回收水瓶、参加社区志愿者机会、锻炼和完成家庭作业。这项工作将有助于指导这些应用程序的实践者和设计者，增加对哪些类型的认知任务和信息将最成功地提高信息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.