Action Tendency Emotions Evoked by Memorable Breast Cancer Messages and their Association with Prevention and Detection Behaviors

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Action Tendency Emotions Evoked by Memorable
Breast Cancer Messages and their Association with
Prevention and Detection Behaviors
Sandi Smith, Lauren Hamel, Michael Kotowski,
Samantha Nazione, Carolyn LaPlante, Charles
Atkin, Cynthia Stohl, Christine Skubisz. This
research was supported by the Breast Cancer and
the Environment Research Centers grant number U01
ES012800 from the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the
National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH, DHHS. 
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Memorable Messages

• Messages which are remembered for long periods of
  time
• Can serve as guides to behavior
• Control theory
• Women with personal experience and with close
  friends or relatives who had experiences with
  breast cancer were more likely to recall
  memorable messages about breast cancer
• Messages about awareness, early detection,
  prevention, and treatment
• With purposes of giving facts, advice, or hope
• From media and interpersonal sources

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Emotions

• Emotions - Internal mental states that result
  from an evaluation of people, events, or objects
  (and we extend to messages here)
• Emotions can be divided into goal incongruent
  emotions (negative emotions) and goal congruent
  emotions (positive emotions)
• Negative anger, sadness, fear
• Positive hope, relief
• Separate emotions are postulated to have
  different problem-solving action tendencies

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Action Tendencies

• Anger can elicit problem solving behaviors
• Sadness can slow cognitive functioning and lead
  to problem solving behaviors
• Fear can be debilitating at high levels but a
  moderate amount can motivate problem solving or
  problem avoiding behaviors
• Hope has no clear action tendency but it is
  thought to be associated with action toward what
  one desires
• Relief results in very little action

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Methods

• 359 female participants took an online survey
• Mostly Caucasian, middle-aged women who had
  completed at least some college
• 60 had a memorable message about breast cancer
  and were asked about characteristics of it such
  as emotions it evoked.
• Asked about detection and prevention behaviors
• Topics, sources, and emotions of memorable
  messages were coded reliably (Kappa ranged from
  .81 to 1)

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Results Evoked emotions

• The top two evoked emotions were sadness and fear
• Emotions were most frequently evoked by messages
  from interpersonal sources such as friends and
  family but also from medical professionals and
  media sources
• Sadness was evoked most highly by detection
  messages, fear by prevention messages, and hope
  by treatment messages

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Results

• H1 Contrary to expectation, memorable messages
  about breast cancer that evoked anger were not
  associated with prevention and detection
  behaviors.
• H2 Also contrary to expectation, memorable
  messages about breast cancer that evoked sadness
  were not associated with prevention and detection
  behaviors

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Results H34

• H3 Partially consistent with expectation, women
  with memorable messages about breast cancer that
  evoked fear were more likely to engage in
  detection behaviors than those whose messages did
  not evoke fear, however they were not more likely
  to report prevention behaviors.
• H4 Contrary to expectation, women with memorable
  messages about breast cancer that evoked negative
  emotions (anger, sadness or fear) were not more
  likely to report prevention and detection
  behaviors than those whose messages evoked
  positive emotions (hope or relief).

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Results RQ12

• RQ1 Will women with memorable messages about
  breast cancer that evoked hope be more likely to
  report prevention and detection behaviors than
  those whose messages did not evoke hope? The
  answer is no.
• RQ2 Will women with memorable messages about
  breast cancer that evoked relief be more likely
  to report prevention and detection behaviors than
  those whose messages did not evoke relief?
• Women recalling memorable messages evoking relief
  were not any more likely to report prevention
  behaviors
• Women recalling memorable messages that evoked
  relief were less likely to report that they
  engaged in detection behaviors

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Discussion

• This research adds to past emotion research
• Fear and sadness were most frequently evoked
• Sadness was mostly evoked by detection messages,
  fear by prevention messages, and hope by
  treatment messages.
• Interpersonal sources of memorable messages that
  evoke emotions are powerful
• Messages that invoked fear were positively
  associated and messages that evoked relief were
  negatively associated with detection behaviors
• There is a trend for actions to occur most when a
  negative emotion is evoked, less so when a
  positive emotion is evoked, but least when no
  emotion is evoked

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Conclusion

• There is promise for the strategic use of message
  type, source, and evoked action tendency emotions
  in breast cancer interventions
• Family and friends are powerful sources of
  memorable messages about breast cancer
• Fear is the emotion most likely to lead to action
• Further emotion and memorable message research is
  necessary in health and other contexts