“I Can See a Story from the Warning”: Understanding the Role of Perceived Narrativity in Pictorial Warning Labels

ABSTRACT

This study examined the role of perceived narrativity in pictorial warning labels (PWLs) in countering warning reactance and increasing warning effectiveness and support in the context of communicating the cancer risk of alcohol. Findings from a randomized experiment (N = 1,188) showed that PWLs with imagery of lived experience were perceived higher in narrativity than those with imagery of graphic health effects. Adding a one-sentence narrative (vs. non-narrative) text statement to PWLs with imagery of lived experience did not affect perceived narrativity. Perceived narrativity predicted lower reactance to warnings and subsequently higher intentions to stop drinking and higher policy support. Total effects showed that PWLs with imagery of lived experience and non-narrative text led to the lowest reactance, the highest intentions to stop drinking, and the highest level of policy support. This study adds to a growing body of evidence that PWLs featuring narrative content are promising in communicating health risks.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2181050

Data availability statement

The data underlying this article are available in openICPSR (doi: 10.3886/E184663V1).

Notes

1. Another paper that compared the differences among text-only warnings, PWLs with imagery of graphic health effects and non-narrative text, and PWLs with imagery of lived experience and non-narrative text is currently under review in another journal. See the supplemental file (Table S1) for comparisons among all four conditions. Along with the variables assessed and reported in this manuscript, participants also responded to items related to fear, disgust, anger, and intentions to reduce alcohol use. The findings related to those additional variables appear in a different manuscript.

2. Without the covariate included, there are no meaningful changes to the analyses. If consolidating the conditions differently, as they are in another paper, race might also be considered a covariate. If race is added as an independent covariate or as an additional covariate to sexual orientation, the p-value for intentions to stop drinking moves to a nonsignificant value of .058 or .052, respectively. As such, the reported differences in intentions should be considered with some caution.

Additional information

Funding

The study reported in this paper is supported by the author’s Faculty Research Grant awarded by Oakland University.