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ABSTRACT
A significant body of literature has examined the relative persuasiveness of gain- vs. loss-framed messages. Despite the amount of research, when and why one message frame may be more persuasive than the other is not fully understood. This article provides a review of theoretical perspectives that have been proposed to explain message framing effects. It then reports on an analysis of published articles conducted to ascertain which theories are most often employed in message framing research. Finally, building upon existing theories, this article advances a preliminary integrative framework that delineates crucial factors determining the relative persuasiveness of gain vs. loss frames.
Notes
1 Daniel J. O’Keefe and Jakob D. Jensen, “The Advantages of Compliance or the Disadvantages of Noncompliance? A Meta-analytic Review of the Relative Persuasive Effectiveness of Gain-framed and Loss-framed Messages,” in Communication Yearbook 30, ed. Christina S. Beck (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006), 1–43; “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain-framed and Loss-framed Messages for Encouraging Disease Prevention Behaviors: A Meta-analytic Review,” Journal of Health Communication 12, no. 7 (2007): 623–44; “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain-Framed and Loss-Framed Messages for Encouraging Disease Detection Behaviors: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Journal of Communication 59, no. 2 (2009): 296–316.
2 Alexander J. Rothman and John A. Updegraff, “Specifying When and How Gain-and Loss-framed Messages Motivate Healthy Behavior: An Integrated Approach,” Perspectives on Framing (2010): 257–77; Jonathan Van’t Riet et al., “Investigating Message-framing Effects in the Context of a Tailored Intervention Promoting Physical Activity,” Health Education Research 25, no. 2 (2009): 343–54.
3 Judith Covey, “The Role of Dispositional Factors in Moderating Message Framing Effects,” Health Psychology 33, no. 1 (2014): 52–65; Jakob D. Jensen et al., “Persuasive Impact of Loss and Gain Frames on Intentions to Exercise: A Test of Six Moderators,” Communication Monographs 85, no. 2 (2018): 245–62.
4 For a review, see Irwin P. Levin and Gary J. Gaeth, “How Consumers Are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information Before and After Consuming the Product,” Journal of Consumer Research 15, no. 3 (1988): 374–8.
5 For a review, see Dietram A. Scheufele, “Framing as a Theory of Media Effects,” Journal of Communication 49, no. 1 (1999): 103–22.
6 Fuyuan Shen, “Chronic Accessibility and Individual Cognitions: Examining the Effects of Message Frames in Political Advertisements,” Journal of Communication 54, no. 1 (2004): 123–37.
7 Levin and Gaeth, “How Consumers Are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information Before and After Consuming the Product.”
8 Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica 47, no. 2 (1979): 263–92.
9 Ibid.; Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice,” Science 211, no. 4481 (1981): 453–8.
10 Beth E. Meyerowitz and Shelly Chaiken, “The Effect of Message Framing on Breast Self-Examination Attitudes, Intentions, and Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52, no. 3 (1987): 500–10.
11 Ibid., 506.
12 Susan T. Fiske, “Attention and Weight in Person Perception: The Impact of Negative and Extreme Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38, no. 6 (1980): 889–906.
13 Alexander J. Rothman and Peter Salovey, “Shaping Perceptions to Motivate Healthy Behavior: The Role of Message Framing,” Psychological Bulletin 121, no. 1 (1997): 3–19.
14 Alexander J. Rothman et al., “Message Frames and Illness Representations: Implications for Interventions to Promote and Sustain Healthy Behavior,” in The Self-Regulation of Health and Illness Behaviour, ed. Linda D. Cameron and Howard Leventhal (London: Routledge, 2003), 281.
15 O’Keefe and Jensen, “The Advantages of Compliance or the Disadvantages of Noncompliance?”
16 Rothman et al., “Message Frames and Illness Representations.”
17 O’Keefe and Jensen, “The Advantages of Compliance or the Disadvantages of Noncompliance?” 23.
18 Ronald W. Rogers, “A Protection Motivation Theory of Fear Appeals and Attitude Change,” The Journal of Psychology 91, no. 1 (1975): 93–114; Kim Witte, “Putting the Fear Back into Fear Appeals: The Extended Parallel Process Model,” Communication Monographs 59, no. 4 (1992): 329–49.
19 Jonathan Van’t Riet et al., “Does Perceived Risk Influence the Effects of Message Framing? Revisiting the Link Between Prospect Theory and Message Framing,” Health Psychology Review 10, no. 4 (2016): 457.
20 Nancy Grant Harrington and Anna M. Kerr, “Rethinking Risk: Prospect Theory Application in Health Message Framing Research,” Health Communication 32, no. 2 (2017): 131–41.
21 E. Tory Higgins, “How Self-Regulation Creates Distinct Values: The Case of Promotion and Prevention Decision Making,” Journal of Consumer Psychology 12, no. 3 (2002): 178; “Beyond Pleasure and Pain,” American Psychologist 52, no. 12 (1997): 1280–300.
22 Charles S. Carver, Steven K. Sutton, and Michael F. Scheier, “Action, Emotion, and Personality: Emerging Conceptual Integration,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26, no. 6 (2000): 741–51; Andrew J. Elliot and Martin V. Covington, “Approach and Avoidance Motivation,” Educational Psychology Review 13, no. 2 (2001): 73–92.
23 Joseph Cesario, Heid Grant, and E. Tory Higgins, “Regulatory Fit and Persuasion: Transfer from ‘Feeling Right,’” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86, no. 3 (2004): 388–404; Angela Y. Lee and Jennifer L. Aaker, “Bringing the Frame into Focus: The Influence of Regulatory Fit on Processing Fluency and Persuasion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86, no. 2 (2004): 205–18; Xiaoli Nan, “The Pursuit of Self-Regulatory Goals: How Counterfactual Thinking Influences Advertising Persuasiveness,” Journal of Advertising 37, no. 1 (2008): 1–27.
24 Rothman et al., “The Strategic Use of Gain- and Loss-Framed Messages to Promote Healthy Behavior: How Theory Can Inform Practice,” Journal of Communication 56, no. 1 (2006): 213.
25 Purva Abhyankar, Daryl B. O’Connor, and Rebecca Lawton, “The Role of Message Framing in Promoting MMR Vaccination: Evidence of a Loss-Frame Advantage,” Psychology, Health & Medicine 13, no. 1 (2008): 1–16; Mary A. Gerend and Janet E. Shepherd, “Using Message Framing to Promote Acceptance of the Human Papillomavirus Vaccine,” Health Psychology 26, no. 6 (2007): 745–52.
26 Leslie K. Ball, Geoffrey Evans, and Ann Bostrom, “Risky Business: Challenges in Vaccine Risk Communication,” Pediatrics 101, no. 3 (1998): 453–8.
27 Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo, Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986); Shelly Chaiken, Akiva Liberman, and Alice H. Eagly, “Heuristics and Systematic Processing Within and Beyond the Persuasion Context,” in Unintended Thought, ed. James S. Uleman and John A. Bargh (New York: Guilford Press, 1989), 212–52.
28 Fiske, “Attention and Weight in Person Perception”; Kahneman and Tversky, “Prospect Theory”; Lauren G. Block and Punam Anand Keller, “When to Accentuate the Negative: The Effects of Perceived Efficacy and Message Framing on Intentions to Perform a Health-Related Behavior,” Journal of Marketing Research 32, no. 2 (1995): 192; Durairaj Maheswaran and Joan Meyers-Levy, “The Influence of Message Framing and Issue Involvement,” Journal of Marketing Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 361–67; Meyerowitz and Chaiken, “The Effect of Message Framing on Breast Self-Examination Attitudes, Intentions, and Behavior.”
29 Maheswaran and Meyers-Levy, “The Influence of Message Framing and Issue Involvement”; Rothman and Salovey, “Shaping Perceptions to Motivate Healthy Behavior.”
30 Block and Keller, “When to Accentuate the Negative,” 192; Faith Gleicher and Richard E. Petty, “Expectations of Reassurance Influence the Nature of Fear-stimulated Attitude Change,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 28, no. 1 (1992): 86–100; Rothman and Salovey, “Shaping Perceptions to Motivate Healthy Behavior.”
31 Serena Chen, Kimberly Duckworth, and Shelly Chaiken, “Motivated Heuristic and Systematic Processing,” Psychological Inquiry 10, no. 1 (1999): 44–9.
32 Sharon S. Brehm and Jack W. Brehm, Psychological Reactance: A Theory of Freedom and Control (New York: Academic Press, 1981); Jack W. Brehm, A Theory of Psychological Reactance (New York: Academic Press, 1966); Robert A. Wicklund, Freedom and Reactance (Potomac, MD: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1974).
33 Lijiang Shen et al., “The Impact of Attitude Accessibility and Decision Style on Adolescents’ Biased Processing of Health-Related Public Service Announcements,” Communication Research 36, no. 1 (2009): 104–28; Kim Witte, “Fear Control and Danger Control: A Test of the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM),” Communication Monographs 61, no. 2 (1994): 113–34; Brian L. Quick and Michael T. Stephenson, “Examining the Role of Trait Reactance and Sensation Seeking on Perceived Threat, State Reactance, and Reactance Restoration,” Human Communication Research 34, no. 3 (2008): 448–76.
34 Michael Burgoon et al., “Revisiting the Theory of Psychological Reactance: Communicating Threats to Attitudinal Freedom,” in The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice, ed. James P. Dillard and Michael Pfau (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002), 213–32.
35 Sung-Mook Hong, “Hong’s Psychological Reactance Scale: A Further Factor Analytic Validation,” Psychological Reports 70, no. 2 (1992): 512–14; Sung-Mook Hong and Salvatora Faedda, “Refinement of the Hong Psychological Reactance Scale,” Educational and Psychological Measurement 56, no. 1 (1996): 173–82.
36 James Price Dillard and Lijiang Shen, “On the Nature of Reactance and Its Role in Persuasive Health Communication,” Communication Monographs 72, no. 2 (2005): 144–68; Quick and Stephenson, “Examining Trait Reactance and Sensation Seeking on Perceived Threat, State Reactance, and Reactance Restoration.”
37 Dillard and Shen, “On the Nature of Reactance and Its Role in Persuasive Health Communication”; Claude H. Miller et al., “Psychological Reactance and Promotional Health Messages: The Effects of Controlling Language, Lexical Concreteness, and the Restoration of Freedom,” Human Communication Research 33, no. 2 (2007): 219–40; Quick and Stephenson, “Examining Trait Reactance and Sensation Seeking on Perceived Threat, State Reactance, and Reactance Restoration.”
38 Quick and Stephenson, “Examining Trait Reactance and Sensation Seeking on Perceived Threat, State Reactance, and Reactance Restoration”; Stephen A. Rains and Monique Mitchell Turner, “Psychological Reactance and Persuasive Health Communication: A Test and Extension of the Intertwined Model,” Human Communication Research 33, no. 2 (2007): 241–69.
39 Xiaoquan Zhao and Xiaoli Nan, “Influence of Self-Affirmation on Responses to Gain- versus Loss-Framed Antismoking Messages,” Human Communication Research 36, no. 4 (2010): 493–511.
40 O’Keefe and Jensen, “The Advantages of Compliance or the Disadvantages of Noncompliance?”; “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain-framed and Loss-framed Messages for Encouraging Disease Prevention Behaviors”; “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain-Framed and Loss-Framed Messages for Encouraging Disease Detection Behaviors”; Daniel J. O’Keefe and Xiaoli Nan, “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain- and Loss-framed Messages for Promoting Vaccination: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Health Communication 27, no. 8 (2012): 776–83; Kristel M. Gallagher and John A. Updegraff, “Health Message Framing Effects on Attitudes, Intentions, and Behavior: A Meta-analytic Review,” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 43, no. 1 (2011): 101–16; Judith Covey, “The Role of Dispositional Factors in Moderating Message Framing Effects,” Health Psychology 33, no. 1 (2014): 52–65; Jonathan Van’t Riet et al., “Does Perceived Risk Influence the Effects of Message Framing? A New Investigation of a Widely Held Notion,” Psychology & Health 29, no. 8 (2014): 933–49.
41 O’Keefe and Jensen, “Advantages of Compliance or the Disadvantages of Noncompliance?”; “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain-Framed and Loss-Framed Messages for Encouraging Disease Prevention Behaviors”; “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain-framed and Loss-framed Messages for Encouraging Disease Detection Behaviors.”
42 O’Keefe and Jensen, “The Advantages of Compliance or the Disadvantages of Noncompliance?”
43 O’Keefe and Jensen, “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain-Framed and Loss-Framed Messages for Encouraging Disease Prevention Behaviors.”
44 O’Keefe and Jensen, “The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain-framed and Loss-framed Messages for Encouraging Disease Detection Behaviors.”
45 Covey, “The Role of Dispositional Factors Moderating Framing Effects,” 65; Jensen et al., “Persuasive Impact of Loss and Gain Frames on Intentions to Exercise.”
46 Chaiken, Liberman, and Eagly, “Heuristics and Systematic Processing Within and Beyond the Persuasion Context.”
47 Shelly Chaiken, Roger Giner-Sorolla, and Serena Chen, “Beyond Accuracy: Defense and Impression Motives in Heuristic and Systematic Information Processing,” in The Psychology of Action: Linking Cognition and Motivation to Behavior, ed. Peter M. Gollwitzer and John A. Bargh (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 553–78.
48 Shelly Chaiken, “Heuristic versus Systematic Information Processing and the Use of Source versus Message Cues in Persuasion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39, no. 5 (1980): 752–66; “The Heuristic Model of Persuasion,” in Social Influence: The Ontario Symposium, vol. 5, ed. Mark P. Zanna, James M. Olson, and C. Peter Herman (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1987), 3–39.
49 Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, and Chen, “Beyond Accuracy.”
50 Peter H. Ditto and David F. Lopez, “Motivated Skepticism: Use of Differential Decision Criteria for Preferred and Nonpreferred Conclusions,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63, no. 4 (1992): 568–84; Akiva Liberman and Shelly Chaiken, “Defensive Processing of Personally Relevant Health Messages,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 18, no. 6 (1992): 669–79.
51 Charles G. Lord, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper, “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, no. 11 (1979): 2098–109; Tom Pyszczynski and Jeff Greenberg, “Toward an Integration of Cognitive and Motivational Perspectives on Social Inference: A Biased Hypothesis-Testing Model,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 20 (1987): 297–340.
52 Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, and Chen, “Beyond Accuracy.”
53 Serena Chen, David Shechter, and Shelly Chaiken, “Getting at the Truth or Getting Along: Accuracy- versus Impression-Motivated Heuristic and Systematic Processing,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, no. 2 (1996): 262–75.
54 Maheswaran and Meyers-Levy, “The Influence of Message Framing and Issue Involvement.”
55 Block and Keller, “When to Accentuate the Negative,” 192; Gleicher and Petty, “Expectations of Reassurance Influence the Nature of Fear-stimulated Attitude Change”; Alexander J. Rothman et al., “The Influence of Message Framing on Intentions to Perform Health Behaviors,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 29, no. 5 (1993): 408–33.
56 Fiske, “Attention and Weight in Person Perception”; Kahneman and Tversky, “Prospect Theory”; Maheswaran and Meyers-Levy, “The Influence of Message Framing and Issue Involvement”; Meyerowitz and Chaiken, “The Effect of Message Framing on Breast Self-Examination Attitudes, Intentions, and Behavior.”
57 Cesario, Grant, and Higgins, “Regulatory Fit and Persuasion”; Nan, “The Pursuit of Self-Regulatory Goals”; Latimer et al., “A Field Experiment Testing the Utility of Regulatory Fit Messages for Promoting Physical Activity,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44, no. 3 (2008): 826–32.; Scott Spiegel, Heidi Grant-Pillow, and Tory Higgins, “How Regulatory Fit Enhances Motivational Strength during Goal Pursuit,” European Journal of Social Psychology 34, no. 1 (2004): 39–54.
58 Lee and Aaker, “Bringing the Frame into Focus.”
59 Traci Mann, David Sherman, and John Updegraff, “Dispositional Motivations and Message Framing: A Test of the Congruency Hypothesis in College Students,” Health Psychology 23, no. 3 (2004): 330–34.
60 Chen, Shechter, and Chaiken, “Accuracy- versus Impression-Motivated Heuristic and Systematic Processing.”
61 Zhao and Nan, “Influence of Self-Affirmation on Responses to Gain- versus Loss-Framed Antismoking Messages”; Amber Marie Reinhart et al., “The Persuasive Effects of Message Framing in Organ Donation: The Mediating Role of Psychological Reactance,” Communication Monographs 74, no. 2 (2007): 229–55; Brian Quick, Benjamin R. Bates, and Jing Wang, “An Evaluation of Gain- and Loss-Frame Messages in Deterring Binge Drinking on College Campuses: A Test of the Moderating Role of Psychological Reactance” (paper, National Communication Association annual convention, San Diego, CA, November 20, 2008).
62 Benjamin A. Toll et al., “Message Framing for Smoking Cessation: The Interaction of Risk Perceptions and Gender,” Nicotine & Tobacco Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 195–200; Benjamin A. Toll et al., “Comparing Gain- and Loss-Framed Messages for Smoking Cessation with Sustained-Release Bupropion: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 21, no. 4 (2007): 534–44.
63 Lord, Ross, and Lepper, “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization,” 2098.
64 Tamera R. Schneider et al., “Visual and Auditory Message Framing Effects on Tobacco Smoking,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 31, no. 4 (2001): 667–82; Xiaoli Nan et al., “Effectiveness of Cigarette Warning Labels: Examining the Impact of Graphics, Message Framing, and Temporal Framing,” Health Communication 30, no. 1 (2015): 81–89.
65 Hyunyi Cho and Franklin J. Boster, “Effects of Gain versus Loss Frame Antidrug Ads on Adolescents,” Journal of Communication 58, no. 3 (2008): 428–46.
66 Hart Blanton, Anne E. Stuart, and Regina J. J. M. Van den Eijnden, “An Introduction to Deviance-Regulation Theory: The Effect of Behavioral Norms on Message Framing,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27, no. 7 (2001): 848–58.
67 John T. Cacioppo and Richard E. Petty, “Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion: The Role of Message Repetition,” in Psychological Processes and Advertising Effects: Theory, Research, and Applications, ed. Linda F. Alwitt and Andrew A. Mitchell (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1985), 91–111. Richard E. Petty, John T. Cacioppo, and David Schumann, “Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement,” Journal of Consumer Research 10, no. 2 (1983): 135–46; Norbert Schwarz, Herbert Bless, and Gerd Bohner, “Mood and Persuasion: Affective States Influence the Processing of Persuasive Communications,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 24 (1991): 161–99; Block and Keller, “When to Accentuate the Negative,” 192.
68 Cacioppo and Petty, “Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion”; Wendy Wood, “Retrieval of Attitude-Relevant Information from Memory: Effects on Susceptibility to Persuasion and on Intrinsic Motivation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 42, no. 5 (1982): 798–810; Richard E. Petty and Timothy C. Brock, “Thought Disruption and Persuasion: Assessing the Validity of Attitude Change Experiments,” in Cognitive Responses in Persuasion, ed. Richard E. Petty, Thomas M. Ostrom, and Timothy. C. Brock (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981), 55–79.
69 Shen et al., “The Impact of Attitude Accessibility and Decision Style on Adolescents’ Biased Processing of Health-Related Public Service Announcements.”
70 David Shechter, “Relational and Integrity Involvement as Determinants of Persuasion: The Self-Monitoring of Attitudes” (Ph.D. diss., New York, New York University, 1988), 48, 3451B.
71 Angela Y. Lee, Jennifer L. Aaker, and Wendi L. Gardner, “The Pleasures and Pains of Distinct Self-Construals: The Role of Interdependence in Regulatory Focus,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 6 (2000): 1122–34.
72 Nan, “The Pursuit of Self-Regulatory Goals”; Michel Tuan Pham and Tamar Avnet, “Ideals and Oughts and the Reliance on Affect versus Substance in Persuasion,” Journal of Consumer Research 30, no. 4 (2004): 503–18.
73 Richard E. Petty, John T. Cacioppo, and Rachel Goldman, “Personal Involvement as a Determinant of Argument-Based Persuasion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 41, no. 5 (1981): 849.
74 Meyerowitz and Chaiken, “Effect of Message Framing on Breast Self-Examination Attitudes, Intentions, and Behavior.”
75 Michael D. Slater, “Involvement as Goal-Directed Strategic Processing: Extending the Elaboration Likelihood Model,” in The Sage Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed., ed. James Price Dillard and Lijiang Shen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002), 180.
76 Erik P. Thompson et al., “Accuracy Motivation Attenuates Covert Priming: The Systematic Reprocessing of Social Information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66, no. 3 (1994): 474–89.
77 Liberman and Chaiken, “Defensive Processing of Personally Relevant Health Messages.”
78 Chen, Duckworth, and Chaiken, “Motivated Heuristic and Systematic Processing,” 46.
79 Chen, Shechter, and Chaiken, “Accuracy- versus Impression-Motivated Heuristic and Systematic Processing,” 265.
80 Cho and Boster, “Effects of Gain versus Loss Frame Antidrug Ads on Adolescents.”
81 Shelly Chaiken and Alice H. Eagly, “Communication Modality as a Determinant of Persuasion: The Role of Communicator Salience,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45, no. 2 (1983): 241–56.
82 Eun-Ju Lee and Soo Yun Shin, “When the Medium Is the Message: How Transportability Moderates the Effects of Politicians’ Twitter Communication,” Communication Research 41, no. 8 (2014): 1088–110.