The effect of affective versus cognitive persuasive messages on African American women’s attitudes toward condom use

Abstract

Objective

Health decision making models propose that affective associations at both the implicit and explicit level and cognitive beliefs influence health behaviours. The current studies investigated whether affective or cognitive persuasive messages would lead to more positive implicit and explicit condom use attitudes and higher intentions among African American college women.

Design

Participants (Study 1 N = 109; Study 2 N = 112) explicit attitudes were assess prior to watching a short video that contained either affective (e.g., safe sex is pleasurable) or cognitive messages (e.g., latex condoms are effective in preventing HIV) in favour of condom use.

Main Outcome Measures

Following the video, participants completed the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP), a measure of implicit attitudes, explicit measures of condom use attitudes that assessed attitudes at the overall and component level, intentions to use condoms, and interest in receiving free sample of condoms.

Results

Participants in the affective message condition reported more positive condom use attitudes on both the implicit and explicit measure, higher intentions to use condoms, and more interest in receiving free condoms than those in the cognitive message condition.

Conclusion

These results suggest that affective messages may be more effective in changing condom use attitudes, which can be used in interventions to promote protective condom use behaviours.

Keywords:

• persuasion
• implicit attitudes
• explicit attitudes
• condom use
• HIV prevention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant (1F31MH092012) from the National Institute of Mental Health.