Effects of attribute framing on cognitive processing and evaluation

When do persuasive messages on vaccine safety steer COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and recommendations? Behavioural insights from a randomised controlled experiment in Malaysia

INTRODUCTION

Vaccine safety is a primary concern among vaccine-hesitant individuals. We examined how seven persuasive messages with different frames, all focusing on vaccine safety, influenced Malaysians to accept the COVID-19 vaccine, and recommend it to individuals with different health and age profiles; that is, healthy adults, the elderly, and people with pre-existing health conditions.

METHODS

A randomised controlled experiment was conducted from 29 April to 7 June 2021, which coincided with the early phases of the national vaccination programme when vaccine uptake data were largely unavailable. 5784 Malaysians were randomly allocated into 14 experimental arms and exposed to one or two messages that promoted COVID-19 vaccination. Interventional messages were applied alone or in combination and compared against a control message. Outcome measures were assessed as intent to both take the vaccine and recommend it to healthy adults, the elderly, and people with pre-existing health conditions, before and after message exposure. Changes in intent were modelled and we estimated the average marginal effects based on changes in the predicted probability of responding with a positive intent for each of the four outcomes.

RESULTS

We found that persuasive communication via several of the experimented messages improved recommendation intentions to people with pre-existing health conditions, with improvements ranging from 4 to 8 percentage points. In contrast, none of the messages neither significantly improved vaccination intentions, nor recommendations to healthy adults and the elderly. Instead, we found evidence suggestive of backfiring among certain outcomes with messages using negative attribute frames, risky choice frames, and priming descriptive norms.

CONCLUSION

Message frames that briefly communicate verbatim facts and stimulate rational thinking regarding vaccine safety may be ineffective at positively influencing vaccine-hesitant individuals. Messages intended to promote recommendations of novel health interventions to people with pre-existing health conditions should incorporate safety dimensions.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

NCT05244356.

Public Negative Labeling Effects on Team Interaction and Performance

Across four studies, we examine how public negative labeling, which is when a group member is publicly identified as bad, affects team performance. Across three experiments and one field study, we test and find support for our model, that public negative labeling undermines team performance via reduced perceptions of team interaction quality. Our study contributes to the expansive conversation on team effectiveness which highlights that “fighting fire with fire” in terms of public negative labeling is ineffective for dealing with uncivil workplace behavior.

Framing and self-responsibility modulate brain activities in decision escalation

Background

Escalation of commitment is a common bias in human decision making. The present study examined (1) differences in neural recruitment for escalation and de-escalation decisions of prior investments, and (2) how the activations of these brain networks are affected by two factors that can arguably modulate escalation decisions: (i) self-responsibility, and (ii) framing of the success probabilities.

Results

Imaging data were obtained from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) applied to 29 participants. A whole-brain analysis was conducted to compare brain activations between conditions. ROI analysis, then, was used to examine if these significant activations were modulated by two contextual factors. Finally, mediation analysis was applied to explore how the contextual factors affect escalation decisions through brain activations. The findings showed that (1) escalation decisions are faster than de-escalation decisions, (2) the corresponding network of brain regions recruited for escalation (anterior cingulate cortex, insula and precuneus) decisions differs from this recruited for de-escalation decisions (inferior and superior frontal gyri), (3) the switch from escalation to de-escalation is primarily frontal gyri dependent, and (4) activation in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula and precuneus were further increased in escalation decisions, when the outcome probabilities of the follow-up investment were positively framed; and activation in the inferior and superior frontal gyri in de-escalation decisions were increased when the outcome probabilities were negatively framed.

Conclusions

Escalation and de-escalation decisions recruit different brain regions. Framing of possible outcomes as negative leads to escalation decisions through recruitment of the inferior frontal gyrus. Responsibility for decisions affects escalation decisions through recruitment of the superior (inferior) gyrus, when the decision is framed positively (negatively).

It's Not Just About the Product

Individuals' disclosure of personal health information (PHI) can hold substantial benefits for both users and providers, but users are often reluctant to disclose, even if they gain benefits such as better personalization. While previous research has dealt with message framing and information quality in a health-related context, these factors have been observed separately. To our best knowledge, we are among the first to have examined both factors (attribute framing and argument strength) and their interactions concerning PHI disclosure. Thus, we conducted a web-based experiment with 529 participants to examine the impacts of two persuasive message techniques (attribute framing and argument strength) on individuals' PHI disclosure. We reveal that individuals tend to disclose more PHI when they experience persuasive messages with more positively framed health wearable (HW) attributes or messages with higher argument strength based on the reasons for the data collection. We enable researchers to uncover the impacts of persuasive messages in highly sensitive data environments and provide practitioners with workable suggestions on how to affect individuals' PHI disclosure behaviors.

The asymmetrical force of persuasive knowledge across the positive–negative divide

In two experimental studies we explore to what extent the general effects of positive and negative framing also apply to positive and negative persuasion. Our results reveal that negative persuasion induces substantially higher levels of skepticism and awareness of being subjected to a persuasion attempt. Furthermore, we demonstrate that in positive persuasion, more claims lead to stronger persuasion, while in negative persuasion, the numerosity of claims carries no significant effect. We interpret this finding along the lines of a satiety-model of persuasion. Finally, using diluted, or low strength claims in a persuasion attempt, we reveal a significant interaction between dispositional reactance and dilution of claims on persuasion knowledge. The interaction states that diluted claims increase the awareness of being subjected to a persuasion attempt, but only for those with a high dispositional level of reactance.

Moderating the interaction between procedural justice and decision frame: the counterbalancing effect of personality traits

This study examined the framing effect of decision making in contexts in which the issue of social justice matters as well as the moderating effects of personality traits on the relationship between justice and framing effects. The authors manipulated procedural justice and outcome valence of the decision frame within two vignettes and measured two personality traits (self-efficacy and anxiety) of participants. The results from 363 participants showed that the moderating effects of personality traits counterbalanced the interaction between justice and framing, such that for individuals with high self-efficacy/low trait anxiety, justice effects were larger in negative framing than in positive framing; those with the opposite disposition exhibited the opposite pattern. These effects were interpreted in terms of an attribution process as the information processing strategy. The aforementioned findings suggest that the justice and decision theories can be developed to account for the moderating effects of personality traits. Some limitations of this study and the direction of future research are also discussed.

Rationality versus reality: the challenges of evidence-based decision making for health policy makers

BACKGROUND

Current healthcare systems have extended the evidence-based medicine (EBM) approach to health policy and delivery decisions, such as access-to-care, healthcare funding and health program continuance, through attempts to integrate valid and reliable evidence into the decision making process. These policy decisions have major impacts on society and have high personal and financial costs associated with those decisions. Decision models such as these function under a shared assumption of rational choice and utility maximization in the decision-making process.

DISCUSSION

We contend that health policy decision makers are generally unable to attain the basic goals of evidence-based decision making (EBDM) and evidence-based policy making (EBPM) because humans make decisions with their naturally limited, faulty, and biased decision-making processes. A cognitive information processing framework is presented to support this argument, and subtle cognitive processing mechanisms are introduced to support the focal thesis: health policy makers' decisions are influenced by the subjective manner in which they individually process decision-relevant information rather than on the objective merits of the evidence alone. As such, subsequent health policy decisions do not necessarily achieve the goals of evidence-based policy making, such as maximizing health outcomes for society based on valid and reliable research evidence.

SUMMARY

In this era of increasing adoption of evidence-based healthcare models, the rational choice, utility maximizing assumptions in EBDM and EBPM, must be critically evaluated to ensure effective and high-quality health policy decisions. The cognitive information processing framework presented here will aid health policy decision makers by identifying how their decisions might be subtly influenced by non-rational factors. In this paper, we identify some of the biases and potential intervention points and provide some initial suggestions about how the EBDM/EBPM process can be improved.

On the perception and operationalization of risk perception

We compare and critique two measures of risk perception. We suggest that a single question — “How risky is the situation?” — captures the concept of risk perception more accurately than the multiple-item measure used by Sitkin and Weingart (1995). In fact, this latter measure inadvertently captures notions of attractiveness or expected return, rather than risk perception. We further propose that the error underlying the construction of Sitkin and Weingart’s measure is explained in terms of a top-down model of risk perception, in which perceived risk and perceived return are consequences, rather than determinants, of attractiveness. Two studies compare the validity of the two alternative measures.

Cognition in Organizations

This article reviews major developments from 2000 to early 2007 in the psychological analysis of cognition in organizations. Our review, the first in this series to survey cognitive theory and research spanning the entire field of industrial and organizational psychology, considers theoretical, empirical, and methodological advances across 10 substantive domains of application. Two major traditions, the human factors and organizational traditions, have dominated cognitively oriented research in this field. Our central message is that the technological and human systems underpinning contemporary organizational forms are evolving in ways that demand greater cooperation among researchers across both traditions. Such cooperation is necessary in order to gain theoretical insights of sufficient depth and complexity to refine the explanation and prediction of behavior in organizations and derive psychologically sound solutions to the unprecedented information-processing burdens confronting the twenty-first century workforce.

Valence framing of political preferences and resistance to persuasion

This study tested the "valence framing effect": an assumption that negatively conceptualized attitudes (as opposing the non-preferred alternative) are more resistant to later persuasion attempts. In the experiment we created choice between two political candidates and experimental subjects were led to conceptualize their political preferences in one of two possible ways: either as supporting the preferred candidate or as opposing the non-preferred candidate. The data indicate that negative preferences show less overall change when exposed to counterarguments. This finding can be incorporated in two theoretical frameworks: dual process theories of attitude change (Elaboration likelihood model) and descriptive decision making theories (Prospect theory). Results are discussed for their implications for the efficacy of political communication. .

What we Never have, we Never Miss? Decision Error and the Risks of Premature Termination

The history of IT systems construction contains many examples of large-scale failures that were compounded by undue persistence - a phenomenon known as escalation of commitment. Yet organizations also need to guard against erring in the opposite direction, that is, terminating (or never starting) a project that, on economic grounds, ought to be completed. This paper highlights the notion of premature termination, suggests why such errors are possible and discusses the implications for practice.