When a Personal HPV Story on a Blog Influences Perceived Social Norms: The Roles of Personal Experience, Framing, Perceived Similarity, and Social Media Metrics

ABSTRACT

The current study examines how a personal health story on a blog can influence individuals’ perceived social norms, adopting the notion that social norms are “group identity-based codes of conduct”. For that, we tested the effects of story framing and personal experience on perceived similarity, which interacts with social media metrics in forming perceived social norms. In an online experiment, college students (N = 220) were recruited to read a blogger’s story in either a gain-frame (the blogger received the HPV vaccine and, thus, prevented cancer) or a loss-frame (the blogger did not receive the vaccine and, thus, developed cancer) with either high or low social media metrics. Participants reported that they were more similar with the blogger in the gain-framed story than the one in the loss-framed story, especially among those who have received the HPV. This perceived similarity was positively associated with both descriptive and injunctive norms; however, the positive association between similarity and descriptive norms disappeared when the blog had low social media metrics. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Notes

1. The FDA approved the extended use of the HPV vaccine to males and females through 45 years old and the CDC recommends the HPV vaccine for females aged through 26 and males through 21 years. We conducted the same analyses for females through 26 and males through 21. However, the results were the same regardless.

2. The self-reported data of the vaccine experience (whether or not a participant has received the HPV vaccine) may be deemed unreliable because the decision of receiving the HPV vaccine may be made by parents when participants were children and, thus, it is possible that participants are not correctly aware of what the injection is about. However, in this study, as the purpose of the HPV vaccine question was to see if one’s belief influences the perceived similarity, we used the self-reported data.

3. The blogger was clearly described as a woman. Thus, it is possible that the participants’ gender could have influenced the perceived similarity. To test this possibility, we conducted an ANCOVA, having participants’ gender, framing (gain vs. loss), and personal experience (whether having the HPV vaccine or not) as factors, social media metrics as a covariate, and perceived similarity as the dependent variable. The result indicated no main and interaction effect of participants’ gender, Fs <1.85, ps >.17. For the sake of simplicity, we report the results of the ANCOVA, without having participants’ gender as a factor.

4. Besides the hypothesized effects, we also tested if participants’ gender influenced the perceived norms. In the regression models, we included participants’ gender as a factor and tested the main and interaction effects of it. The main effect of participants’ gender was significant on the perceived descriptive norm, β = .21, p < .001, indicating that female participants rated higher descriptive norm than male participants. But no interaction of gender was found with the two manipulations on descriptive norm, βs < .47, ps > .19. When the same regression was tested on the perceived injunctive norm, the main effect of the gender was marginal, β = .12, p = .06. But, again, no interaction was found, βs < .57, ps > .29.