Mask‐wearing, social distancing, and vaccination remain effective ways to mitigate the spread of COVID‐19. Yet, many hesitate to enact some or all these preventive behaviors. We created three persuasive messages—framed to promote benefits to either (1) oneself, (2) close‐others, or (3) distant‐others—to determine whether the effectiveness of these messages varied based on personality differences (specifically independent/interdependent self‐construal and chronic construal level). In two online experiments (N = 862), we measured individual differences and showed participants one of the three messages. Consistent interactions between interdependent self‐construal and message conditions showed that those high in interdependent self‐construal responded most positively to the self‐focused messages promoting mask‐wearing, social distancing, and COVID‐19 vaccination. Those low in interdependent self‐construal responded most negatively to the self‐focused messages. Although no interaction effect was observed for independent self‐construal, and inconsistent evidence emerged for construal level, other‐focused messages performed either better or equally well to the self‐focused messages for most participants and may thus be promising for future public health communication efforts.
Mask-wearing, social distancing, and vaccination are effective ways to mitigate COVID-19. Yet, many hesitate to enact these behaviors. We created three persuasive messages—framed to promote benefits to 1) oneself, 2) close-others, or 3) distant-others—to determine whether the effectiveness of these messages varied based on personality differences (independent/interdependent self-construal, chronic construal level). In two online experiments (N = 862), we measured individual differences and showed participants one of the three messages. Consistent interactions between interdependent self-construal and message conditions showed that those high (low) in interdependent self-construal responded most positively (negatively) to the self-focused messages promoting mask-wearing, social distancing, and COVID-19 vaccination. No interaction effect was observed for independent self-construal, and inconsistent evidence emerged for construal level. Generally, however, other-focused messages performed either better or equally well to the self-focused messages for most participants and may thus be promising for future public health communication efforts.
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