When Is Congruency Helpful? Interactive Effects of Frame, Motivational Orientation, and Perceived Message Quality on Fruit and Vegetable Consumption

Abstract

Health messages framed to be congruent with people’s motivational orientation have been shown to be generally effective in promoting health behavior change, but some inconsistencies have been found. This study tested whether the perceived quality of a health message moderated the congruency effect in the domain of fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption. Undergraduate participants (N = 109) read a health message promoting FV intake in which the frame (gain vs. loss) was either congruent or incongruent with their approach/avoidance motivational orientation. Perceived message quality and intention to increase FV intake were assessed after message exposure, and self-reported FV intake was assessed one week later. A significant interaction between congruency and perceived message quality was found on both intention and FV intake. When messages were congruent, higher intentions and FV intake were observed when perceived message quality was high, but the reverse pattern was observed when perceived message quality was low. The findings support the potential utility of using congruently-framed messages to promote fruit and vegetable consumption, while also underscoring the necessity of using high-quality messages in order for congruency to influence health-related behaviors.

Funding

This study was supported by a grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), with the reference SFRH/BD/66193/2009, awarded to the first author.

Notes

¹ Although motivational orientation was operationalized through assessing approach/avoidance tendencies, an important distinction made by Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins, 1997) was taken into account when designing the messages used, namely disentangling between the presence of a reward and the absence of an aversive outcome (both gains) and between the presence of an aversive outcome or the absence of a reward (both losses). Prior work suggests that people are more responsive to the presence of outcomes in messages (regardless of whether they are rewarding or aversive outcomes) compared to the absence of an outcome (e.g., Dijkstra, Rothman, & Pietersma, 2011), so the gain messages focused primarily on the presence of rewarding outcomes and the loss messages focused primarily on the presence of aversive outcomes, while referring to the exact same consequences (i.e., same consequences framing, see Rothman & Salovey, 1997). Moreover, the messages controlled for the fact that some outcomes might be considered intrinsically promotional (e.g., being attractive), while others may be considered intrinsically preventive (e.g., having better health), by balancing the number of each type of outcomes.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), with the reference SFRH/BD/66193/2009, awarded to the first author.