Don't derogate this message! Self-affirmation promotes online type 2 diabetes risk test taking

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to examine whether self-affirmation promotes acceptance of threatening type 2 diabetes information and risk-testing behaviour. In an experimental study (N = 84), we manipulated self-affirmation by allowing participants to affirm a value that was either personally important or unimportant to them, and measured participants' risk level prior to reading threatening type 2 diabetes information. As dependent variables, we measured message derogation, intentions to do an online type 2 diabetes risk test and online risk-testing behaviour. Findings showed that self-affirmation decreased message derogation, increased intentions to do an online risk test and promoted online risk test taking among at-risk participants. Among participants not at-risk, self-affirmation decreased intentions and online risk test taking. Therefore, it is concluded, that for an at-risk population self-affirmation can decrease defensive responses to threatening health information and promote (online) risk test taking for diseases.

Keywords:

• self-affirmation
• defensive processing
• health-risk information
• screening behaviour
• type 2 diabetes

Acknowledgements

We thank Adrian Hoogendoorn for his help with creating the figure for screening behaviour. We also thank Danny van Balen, Carolien Cloostermans, Vera Holweg, Debby Markovic, Anniek Naarding and Valerie Priems for their help with data collection.

Notes

Notes

1. The study of Reed and Aspinwall (1998) forms an exception regarding intentions to take precautions; self-affirmed participants at-risk reported lower intentions to reduce their caffeine consumption than their non-affirmed counterparts.

2. It should be noted that we do not know what level of risk participants were for these non-targeted outcomes. However, the effect of self-affirmation on risk perception is consistent with the idea that self-affirmation can have an adverse effect when people do not feel particularly threatened.

3. The mean risk-level score is low, indicating a relatively ‘healthy’ sample. This is not surprising as the mean age in our sample is below 39 years.

4. We also included a measure of negative affect to rule mood out as an alternative explanation for the observed effects. Participants responded to the question ‘I felt fearful while reading the information about type 2 diabetes’ (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). The analysis using this measure as dependent variable revealed no significant main or interaction effects.