Effects of social norms and message framing on reducing the stigma of gynecological diseases: A cognitive-affective-behavioral model.

Abstract

This paper presents an experiment exploring message strategies to reduce the stigma of gynecological diseases and promote women's sexual and reproductive health. Drawing on the cognitive-affective-behavioral model of stigma, we propose that social norms and message framing as two message strategies, respectively, address the cognitive and affective components of the stigma of gynecological diseases, which lead to desired changes in the help-seeking intention as the behavioral component. We conducted a 3 (no norm vs. descriptive norm vs. descriptive plus injunctive norms) by 2 (gain-framed vs. loss-framed) between-subject experiment (N = 202). The results reveal that messages with the combination of descriptive and injunctive norms reduce the greatest cognitive components of stigma. Gain-framed messages induced fewer affective components than loss-framed ones. The results suggest that changes in the cognitive and affective components of stigma may sequentially lead to favorable changes in the behavioral component. This study contributes to public understanding of the stigma of gynecological diseases by disentangling the various components and identifying the specific message strategies for stigma reduction.