An official website of the United States government
Lab experiments have shown that reminders of romantic partners buffer against stressors. Yet, tightly controlled experiments do not mimic what transpires in people’s actual lives. Thus, an important question is as follows: To what extent do reminders of romantic partners confer affective bene ts when they occur“in the wild” as people experience their daily activities? To capture people’s emotional experience in real time, two studies, each spanning 3 months, used event-contingent ecological momentary assessments with a within-subject experimental manipulation. Prior to encountering a stressful event (taking an exam), participants received either a supportive text message from their partner or no message (Studies 1 and 2), or a supportive text message from the research team (Study 2). Receiving supportive partner messages, compared to no messages or messages from the research team, led to less negative affect and greater positive affect, and to less negative affect and greater positive affect about the exam itself. Receiving supportive partner messages had no statistically signi cant effects on subjective stress. Interestingly, the quality of the partner messages, as coded by independent raters, did not signi cantly predict the magnitude of the affective bene ts. These ndings suggest that receiving any supportive partner message, and not necessarily more subtle differences in the quality of the message, may be the key ingredient for these bene ts to occur. The present work advances understanding of how the symbolic presence of partners confers affective regulatory bene ts in everyday life. Implications for emotion regulation and the utility of integrating perspectives from adult attachment are discussed.
more »
« less
Getting to the Heart of the Matter in Later Life: The Central Role of Affect in Health Message Framing
Abstract Background and Objectives Adopting healthy behaviors is often influenced by message framing; gain-framed messages emphasize the benefits of engaging in a behavior, whereas loss-framed messages highlight the consequences of not engaging in a behavior. Research has begun to uncover the underlying affective pathways involved in message framing. In the current study, we examined the role of affect in message framing to encourage exercise program enrollment among older adults. Research Design and Methods We mailed flyers to 126 volunteers assigned to a gain- or loss-framed condition and measured their affective reactions to the flyer and enrollment intentions. After the call, participants had the opportunity to contact us to enroll. Results Gain versus loss framing led to more positive affect toward the flyer, which predicted intentions and enrollment effort. In indirect effect analyses, frame indirectly influenced intentions and enrollment effort via positive affect. Discussion and Implications Although message framing plays an indirect role in influencing behavior, affect plays a central role.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1536260
- PAR ID:
- 10301132
- Editor(s):
- Meeks, Suzanne
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Gerontologist
- Volume:
- 61
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 0016-9013
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 756 to 762
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
In this study, the effectiveness of emphasizing concern for well-being in COVID-19 crisis communication messages was examined as an extension of the IDEA model. Using theory from organizational behavior, it was hypothesized that individuals whose institutions demonstrate concern for their well-being in a COVID-19 message would be more likely to report intentions to engage in prosocial behavior. Two messages, which differed only through an added emphasis on concern for well-being, were randomly displayed to 770 participants in an online survey. After reading the message about an increase in COVID-19 cases, participants answered questions meant to gauge intentions relevant to COVID-19 behavior. Results identified significant relationships between message group (control vs. experimental) and intentions related to going to indoor events, wearing a mask, and practicing social distancing. These relationships were in the opposite direction as what was hypothesized, showing that emphasizing concern for well-being could contribute to risky behavioral intentions. Because subgroup analyses indicated that this effect was primarily found amongst individuals who did not change their behavior as a result of the pandemic, further research is needed to determine whether institutions and their communities benefit from messages that demonstrate a concern for well-being.more » « less
-
In intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) abundant supportive messages are provided to learners. One implicit assumption behind this design is that learners would actively process and benefit from feedback messages when interacting with ITS individually. However, this is not true for all learners; some gain little after numerous practice opportunities. In the current research, we assume that if the learner invests enough cognitive effort to review feedback messages provided by the system, the learner’s performance should be improved as practice opportunities accumulate. We expect that the learner’s cognitive effort investment could be reflected to some extent by the response latency, then the learner’s improvement should also be correlated with the response latency. Therefore, based on this core hypothesis, we conduct a cluster analysis by exploring features relevant to learners’ response latency. We expect to find several features that could be used as indicators of the feedback usage of learners; consequently, these features may be used to predict learners’ learning gain in future research. Our results suggest that learners’ prior knowledge level plays a role when interacting with ITS and different patterns of response latency. Learners with higher prior knowledge levels tend to interact flexibly with the system and use feedback messages more effectively. The quality of their previous attempts influences their response latency. However, learners with lower prior knowledge perform two opposite patterns, some tend to respond more quickly, and some tend to respond more slowly. One common characteristic of these learners is their incorrect response latency is not influenced by the quality of their previous performance. One interesting result is that those quick responders forget faster. Thus, we concluded that for learners with lower prior knowledge, it is better for them not to react hastily to obtain a more durable memory.more » « less
-
Though significant research exists on earthquake hazard adjustment adoption more generally, research focused on how information seeking influences planned or actual preparedness behavior is rare, limiting our understanding of how information seeking translates into preparedness. To address this gap, our study tests a proposed model of household seismic hazard adjustment using questionnaire responses of roughly 400 households living in the Portland, OR metropolitan region. The proposed model includes components of the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) with specific emphasis on past information seeking behavior, preparedness behavior, intentions to seek information, and intentions to take protective action. Other components include risk perception, earthquake experience, affective response, seismic risk zone residency, and demographics. Consistent with previous research, this study finds information seeking behavior to be the strongest influence on preparedness with other important influences being risk perception, affective response, and intentions to prepare. We find weak ties between risk zone residency and earthquake risk perception, though this may be because our sample has little experience with earthquakes and the majority live in the same earthquake risk zones. Importantly, longitudinal studies are needed to determine whether information seeking and intentions to prepare eventually result in household protective action.more » « less
-
Although early concepts of risk perception measures distinguished cognitive from affective items, until recently multi-dimensional taxonomies were absent from risk perception studies, and even more from tests of their association with behavior or policy support. Six longitudinal panel surveys on U.S. COVID-19 views (n = 2004 February 2020, ending April 2021) allowed testing of these relationships among ≤ 10 risk perception items measured in each wave. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed consistent distinctions between personal (conditioning perceived risk on taking further or no further protective action), collective (U.S., global), affective (concern, dread), and severity (estimates of eventual total U.S. infections and deaths) measures, while affect (good-bad feelings) and duration (how long people expect the outbreak to last) did not fit with their assumed affective and severity (respectively) parallels. Collective and affective/affect risk perceptions most strongly predicted both behavioral intentions and policy support for mask wearing, avoidance of large public gatherings, and vaccination, controlling for personal risk perception (which might be partly reflected in the affective/affect effects) and other measures. These findings underline the importance of multi-dimensionality (e.g. not just asking about personal risk perceptions) in designing risk perception research, even when trying to explain personal protective actions.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnaa128
