Self-Persuasion Increases Healthy Eating Intention Depending on Cultural Background.

Shuang Li,Barbara C N Müller,Cor Van Halen,Rick B Van Baaren

doi:10.3390/ijerph17103405

Abstract

Unhealthy eating behavior has become a global health risk and thus needs to be influenced. Previous research has found that self-persuasion is more effective than direct persuasion in changing attitudes and behavioral intentions, but the influence of the cultural backgrounds of those being persuaded remains unclear. We conducted two studies to investigate the effectiveness of self-persuasion and direct persuasion techniques in promoting healthy eating intention among different ethnicities in the Netherlands. Native Dutch, Moroccan–Dutch, and Turkish–Dutch participated both online and offline. Participants saw a poster with either a self-persuasion message (“Why would you choose healthier food?”) or a direct persuasion message (“Choose healthier food!”), and were then asked to report their intention to eat healthily in the upcoming month. Significant cultural differences were found between native Dutch and Moroccan–Dutch in Study 1, and between the native Dutch and Turkish-Dutch who participated offline in Study 2. Accordingly, cultural background was found to moderate the relationship between persuasion and healthy eating intention among these groups. These results provided preliminary evidence for the moderation effect of persuasion on healthy eating intention: Self-persuasion appears to be more effective for people with an individualistic background, and direct persuasion appears to be more effective for people with a collectivistic background.

Highlights

Unhealthy eating behavior has become one of the most recognized global health risks, and has been identified as a major cause of a number of severe physical and mental health problems, such as cancer, insomnia, and depression [1,2]
These results provided preliminary evidence for the moderation effect of persuasion on healthy eating intention: Self-persuasion appears to be more effective for people with an individualistic background, and direct persuasion appears to be more effective for people with a collectivistic background
Univariate testing showed that cultural background was significant on all the variables except for vertical individualism (p = 0.133, ηp 2 = 0.03)

Summary

Introduction

Unhealthy eating behavior has become one of the most recognized global health risks, and has been identified as a major cause of a number of severe physical and mental health problems, such as cancer, insomnia, and depression [1,2]. In the Netherlands, much effort has been made to discourage unhealthy eating behaviors, for instance the 5-year nationwide mass media campaign on the prevention of being overweight, launched in 2002 [4], and the well-known public campaign “Gezonder Mag” (translation: “Healthier is allowed”) [5]. These public campaigns rarely took the audience’s cultural background into account.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion