Employing Interpersonal Influence to Promote Multivitamin Use

Abstract

Boster, Kotowski, Andrews, and Serota (2011) proposed that superdiffusers are well connected, persuasive, and a maven in a content area. They proposed that superdiffusers, if recruited, could promote the adoption of health practices. In this article a model of this process is presented, and an intervention designed to test the efficacy of this influence strategy is introduced. Specifically, superdiffusers were recruited to persuade their peers to take a daily multivitamin. Evidence was found consistent with the intervention's effectiveness.

Notes

¹This point does not discount the possibilities that messages might be sent to them that serve to strengthen their behavioral choices, that might make these choices less vulnerable to counterpersuasion efforts, or that might make them opt to become an advocate of the advocated health practice.

²This assumption can be relaxed, but at this juncture it can be noted that contacts who receive messages from more than one superdiffuser have a higher likelihood of adopting the recommended health practice (Harkins & Petty, 1981). Thus, when overlap in contacts produces an overestimate of k, the influence parameter, ϕ, introduced subsequently is underestimated. It is presumed that these errors cancel to within a small margin of error.

³It might be noticed that there is no model of second-order effects, or even higher order effects. That is, the possibility that those influenced by superdiffusers might influence others is not considered. The model was not expanded in this manner for this project because the duration between pretest and posttest was deemed insufficient to produce measurable higher order effects.

⁴The recruitment message can be obtained by contacting the first author.

⁵Tables for all analyses reported in this article may be obtained by contacting the first author.