Affective and cognitive reactions to narrative versus statistical evidence organ donation messages

Abstract

Persuasive health messages have been examined for their effectiveness, but few studies have explored the cognitive and affective reactions to these messages. The goal of the present research was to gain insight into the cognitive and affective reactions to statistical evidence and narrative persuasive messages about organ donation in order to determine why these different types of evidence are persuasive. The influence of prior thought and intent about organ donation on these reactions also was explored. Cognitive reactions examined included total, positive, and negative thoughts about organ donation, message ratings, and assessments of causal relevance, while affective reactions examined included positive and negative emotions about organ donation and anxiety. Results indicated a main effect for evidence type such that statistical evidence messages produced greater results in terms of all the cognitive reactions, while narratives produced greater results for all of the affective reactions. A main effect for level of prior thought and intent regarding organ donation indicated that this variable influences both cognitive and affective reactions to persuasive organ donation messages. No interaction effects were found to be significant. In terms of the Heuristic Systematic Model of persuasion, statistical evidence messages were found to enhance both systematic and heuristic processing while narratives were found to enhance only heuristic processing. Implications for health communication practitioners are discussed.