Message Framing and Defensive Processing: A Cultural Examination

Abstract

Past research has shown that health messages on safer sexual practices that focus on relational consequences are more persuasive than messages that focus on personal consequences. However, we theorize that it is defensiveness against personal risk framing that threatens the self among people from more individualistic cultures. Two studies tested this idea. Study 1 showed that European Americans were less persuaded by personal framing than by relational framing but that this pattern was not found for Asian Americans, who are more collectivistic. Study 2 showed that these defensive patterns were eliminated among European American participants when a person's self-image was affirmed. These results suggest defensive processes as the mechanism behind the differences in message framing effectiveness and motivate a closer look at cultural patterns.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank David K. Sherman for his helpful suggestions for implementing self-affirmation in Study 2 and commenting on the earlier version of the article, and the UCSB Culture Lab for commenting on earlier versions of the article.