Wang Lili, Touré-Tillery Maferima, McGill Ann L
School of Management, Zhejiang University, 310058 Hangzhou, China.
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA.
J Acad Mark Sci. 2023;51(2):266-285. doi: 10.1007/s11747-022-00891-6. Epub 2022 Jul 14.
The present article examines how disease anthropomorphism affects compliance with recommendations for preventing the disease. We find that consumers are more likely to comply with health recommendations when the disease is described in anthropomorphic (vs. non-anthropomorphic) terms because anthropomorphism increases psychological closeness to the disease, which increases perceived vulnerability. We demonstrate the effect of disease anthropomorphism on health compliance in seven studies with several diseases (COVID-19, breast cancer), manipulations of anthropomorphism (first person and third person; with and without an image), and participant populations (the US and China). We test the proposed pathway through psychological closeness and perceived vulnerability with sequential mediation analyses and moderation-of-process approaches, and we rule out alternative accounts based on known consequences of anthropomorphism and antecedents of health compliance. This research contributes to the theory and practice of health communication and to the growing literature on how the anthropomorphism of negative entities affects consumers' judgments and behaviors.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11747-022-00891-6.
本文探讨了疾病拟人化如何影响对疾病预防建议的依从性。我们发现，当疾病用拟人化（而非非拟人化）的术语描述时，消费者更有可能遵守健康建议，因为拟人化增加了与疾病的心理亲近感，进而增加了感知到的易感性。我们在七项研究中展示了疾病拟人化对健康依从性的影响，这些研究涉及多种疾病（新冠肺炎、乳腺癌）、拟人化的操纵（第一人称和第三人称；有无图像）以及参与人群（美国和中国）。我们通过序列中介分析和过程调节方法检验了通过心理亲近感和感知易感性提出的路径，并排除了基于拟人化的已知后果和健康依从性的前因的替代解释。这项研究有助于健康传播的理论和实践，以及关于负面实体的拟人化如何影响消费者判断和行为的不断增长的文献。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s11747-022-00891-6获取的补充材料。
