The effects of disgust eliciting persuasive messages on physical activity

The increasing prevalence of obese and overweight people is associated with a concomitant decrease in health. Physical activity is associated with improvements in health, including weight loss. Social marketing campaigns are a common tool to influence health behavior. These campaigns rely on messages that persuade people to adopt the message’s recommendations. Social marketing campaigns are often designed to discourage unhealthy behaviors. Many of these campaigns use emotional appeals. Little research has examined the efficacy of emotional appeals to promote physical activity. This study examines the ability of fear and disgust to increase physical activity. Fear is the most commonly used (and studied) emotion. However, fear has often been confounded by disgust. Disgust is a different emotion than fear, and a strong motivator of behavior. Further, disgust can attract and repel attention and influence social norms. This study examined the effects of emotion—inducing messages on physical activity, cognitive processing, and social diffusion. Specifically, disgust, fear, and their interaction were investigated. A series of 4 pre—tests were conducted to test the images, text, and measures used in the main study. Two disgust—evoking images and 2 parallel messages (1 fear—evoking, 1 not fear—evoking) were selected for inclusion in the study brochures. Participants in the main study were university employees (n=156). Participants read either a fearful or non—fearful message promoting physical activity. The messages contained one of two disgusting images, or a neutral image. Self—report physical activity was collected prior to, shortly after, and 16 days after reading the brochure. Measures of information seeking, social diffusion, and fitness test enrollment were collected. Cognitive processing was assessed via attention, memory, and processing style. Results indicated that highly disgusting images increase reported vigorous physical activity and information seeking. Disgust had no effect on cognitive processing, but fear negatively affected memory. There were no interactions of disgust and fear, indicating that these emotions are distinct and persuade differently. The major implication of this study is that disgust evoking messages can increase physical activity. Further, fear interferes with message encoding, thus should not be used in health appeals. Implications for practice and for future research are discussed.