Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Department of Psychology, DePaul University.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2021 Jun;27(2):201-212. doi: 10.1037/xap0000285. Epub 2021 Mar 22.
How health-related messages are framed can impact their effectiveness in promoting behaviors, and messages framed in terms of gains have been shown to be more effective among older adults. Recent findings have suggested that the affective response to framed messages can contribute to these effects. However, the impact of demands associated with psycholinguistic processing for different frames is not well understood. In this study, exercise-related messages were gain or loss framed and with a focus on either desirable or undesirable outcomes. Participants read these messages while their eye movements were monitored and then provided affective ratings. Older adults reacted less negatively than younger adults to loss-framed messages and messages focusing on undesirable outcomes. Eye-movement measures indicated both younger and older adults had difficulty processing the most complex messages (loss-framed messages focused on avoiding desirable outcomes). When gain-framed messages were easily processed, they engendered more positive affect, which in turn, was related to better recall. These results suggest that affective and cognitive mechanisms are interdependent in comprehension of framed messages for younger and older adults. An implication for translation to effective health communication is that simpler message framing engenders a positive reaction, which in turn supports memory for that information, regardless of age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
健康相关信息的呈现方式会影响其促进行为的效果，而以收益为导向的信息对老年人更为有效。最近的研究结果表明，对框架信息的情感反应有助于产生这些效果。然而，不同框架的心理语言处理相关需求对这些效果的影响尚不清楚。在这项研究中，运动相关的信息以收益或损失为框架，并以理想或不理想的结果为重点。参与者在阅读这些信息的同时，其眼球运动被监测，然后提供情感评价。与年轻人相比，老年人对损失框架信息和以不理想结果为重点的信息的负面反应较少。眼动测量表明，年轻人和老年人在处理最复杂的信息（以避免理想结果为重点的损失框架信息）时都有困难。当收益框架信息易于处理时，它会产生更积极的情感，进而与更好的记忆相关。这些结果表明，情感和认知机制在年轻人和老年人对框架信息的理解中是相互依存的。这对有效的健康传播具有启示意义，即简单的信息框架会产生积极的反应，从而支持对该信息的记忆，而与年龄无关。
