自我肯定在风险性信息传播中的作用研究

Too Much or To a Tee?Research on Self-Affirmation Effectiveness in Health-Risk Communication

自我肯定能削弱人们对于风险性信息的心理防御,增强信息说服效果,但当前对自我肯定会否引发过度反应尚不明确。为此设计了随机分配实验,通过回归与显著性区域检验发现:(1)自我肯定对风险性信息说服的促进作用随着防御反应增强而增强;(2)在低相关性接收者中,自我肯定能增强信息在防御反应较强接收者中的说服效果,并削弱过度反应,如过度恐惧情况;(3)在相关性较高的接收者中,自我肯定增强说服的作用不甚明显,甚至存在加剧高相关与高防御接收者对信息反应不足的情况。检验了自我肯定对风险性信息说服效果的边界条件,对自我肯定与风险性信息沟通理论形成补充;且指出了应用自我肯定方法的适用对象。

Self-affirmation has been validated as an effective way to dampen the defensiveness of message recipients when facing the health-risk information designed to evoke fear to cease unhealthy behaviors. However, it has been unclear in current literature that whether self-affirmation is potential to introduce overreaction. With experiments and region-of-significance test method, the current study discovered that.（1） Self-affirmation exerted a stronger persuading effect in health-risk communication along with the increase in defensiveness. （2）In those message recipients with low relevance, sel^affir marion enhanced the persuasiveness of health-risk message when defensive reaction was high. In the meantime, it reduced the overreaction such as unnecessary fear. （3） In contrast, in those message re- cipients with high relevance, self-affirmation effect was either insignificant or even strengthened de- fensive reaction and decreased message persuasiveness when defensiveness was high. The present study discussed in details the boundary conditions of self-affirmation effect across distinct defensive- ness and relevance. And this study contributes to the self-affirmation and health-risk communication theories. In practice, the current study sheds lights on the suitable group for self-affirmation tactic.