Communicator Similarity, Fear Arousing Communications, and Compliance with Health Care Recommendations¹

Abstract

Using a pretest-treatment-multiple posttest design, two studies were conducted to investigate the effects of race of communicator and different levels of fear-arousing dental health appeals on reported anxiety, attitudes, information retention, and behavior change among 304 black, junior high school students. In addition to paper-and-pencil measures, a chemical dye (erythrosin), which stains red the bacteria concentrations on teeth, was used to measure changes of actual toothbrushing behavior. The results of the two studies for behavior change were reasonably consistent. Irrespective of the fear level of the message, the similar communicator produced more immediate behavior change than the dissimilar communicator, and correlations showed that anxiety reports were unrelated to behavior change. Overall, fear communications positively influenced anxiety and attitudes but did not affect behavior. The findings suggest that caution be exercised in using self reports as measures of effectiveness of persuasive communications and additional factors need to be incorporated into existing theories to account for differential reactions to threat appeals.Research has demonstrated that changes in attitudes and behavior are more likely to occur when the source and recipient of a communication are similar rather than dissimilar. Influence has been affected by source-recipient similarity in occupations and life styles (DabbsThe Mazen and Leventhal study was particularly interesting because it was conducted in a natural setting in which source similarity was varied visually and included a measure of an important real-life behavior. The results not only showed that a similar communicator can increase compliance, but also that a boomerang effect can be generated by a dissimilar communicator. Expectant mothers developed significantly more negative attitudes toward breast feeding their children when the communicator was dissimilar in race, and significantly increased actual breast feeding behavior when the communicator was similar in race. Curiously, source similarity affected positive action more than positive attitude change. The effect held whether the communicator personally endorsed the message or presented it as factual information. These results are consistent with recent evidence that suggests the emergence of a more positive self concept among black people (Caplan, 1970;Hall, Cross & Freedle, 1972) and own-group preference among black children, including those living in the deep south (Epstein, Krupat & Obudho, 1975;Gregor & McPherson, 1966;Hraba & Grant, 1970).One aim of the present studies was t o investigate further whether similarity of race of communicator in a natural setting enhances attitudinal and behavioral compliance with the recommendations of a communication. A second aim was to determine whether the effects of the content of a communication can override the impact of communicator-recipient similarity. To accomplish this, black junior high school students in two southern cities were confronted with different level...

How the Opinions of Racial Minorities Influence Judgments of Discrimination

“…Downloaded by [Michigan State University] We argue here that, when social referencing occurs in the domain of discrimination, the opinions of members of certain groups are given extra weight. In contrast to the familiar notion that people tend to be more influenced by similar others, including people of their own race (e.g., Dembroski, Lasater, & Ramirez, 1978), or give greater weight to members of high-status groups (e.g., Eagley, 1983;Kirchler & Davis, 1986), we propose instead that, in the face of potential discrimination, adults target those individuals presumed to provide the most information about the offensiveness of an action or commentmembers of the target category. In short, we define targeted social referencing as paying particular attention to members of relevant target groups in situations where discrimination is a possibility, and giving extra weight to the reactions of these individuals when making decisions about appropriate behavioral responses.…”

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