Need for cognition and message complexity in motivating fruit and vegetable intake among callers to the cancer information service.

This field experiment examined the impact of an individual's need for cognition (NFC; the tendency to enjoy thinking deeply about issues), complex versus simple messages, and the interaction of NFC and message type on encouraging fruit and vegetable consumption. Callers to the Cancer Information Service of the National Cancer Institute (N=517) were asked to participate in the experiment at the end of their call. Individual NFC was assessed, and participants were assigned randomly to receive a telephone message promoting fruit and vegetable consumption that was either complex and multifaceted or simple and straightforward.

Physical and mental health costs of traumatic war experiences among Civil War veterans.

Background: Hundreds of thousands of soldiers face exposure to combat during wars across the globe. The health effects of traumatic war experiences have not been adequately assessed across the lifetime of these veterans.

Objective: To identify the role of traumatic war experiences in predicting postwar nervous and physical disease and mortality using archival data from military and medical records of veterans from the Civil War.

Matching health messages to monitor-blunter coping styles to motivate screening mammography.

This study examined whether providing messages matched to women's monitor-blunter coping styles is effective in encouraging mammography utilization. Female callers to a cancer information hotline were assessed at the end of their regular telephone call and classified as monitors or blunters. A randomly assigned message promoting mammography utilization, tailored for monitors or blunters, was delivered on the telephone, and a similarly tailored brochure and refrigerator magnet were mailed to participants immediately after their call.

Message framing and pap test utilization among women attending a community health clinic.

In a randomized experiment, women (N = 441) watched either a loss- or gain-framed video emphasizing the prevention or detection functions of the Pap test to test the hypothesis that loss- and gain-framed messages differentially influence health behaviors depending on the risk involved in performing the behavior. As predicted, loss-framed messages emphasizing the costs of not detecting cervical cancer early (a risky behavior) and gain-framed messages emphasizing the benefits of preventing cervical cancer (a less risky behavior) were most persuasive in motivating women to obtain a Pap test.

Matching health messages to information-processing styles: need for cognition and mammography utilization.

The use of tailored health communications has become a favored technique for persuading individuals to engage in health behaviors, such as screening mammography. This experiment examined the impact of tailoring persuasive health communications to one aspect of individuals' information-processing styles, that of the need for cognition (NFC), the enjoyment of thinking deeply about issues. To determine whether messages matched to an individual's NFC are more influential than mismatched messages, 602 women who called the Cancer Information Service (CIS) of the National Cancer Institute were asked to participate in an experiment at the end of their service call.

A source of error in self-reports of pap test utilization.

The prevention and early detection of cervical cancer is achieved through women's regular use of Pap tests. Ascertaining adherence to Pap screening guidelines is often based on self-report, which may be unreliable. This study examined the reliability of Pap test self-reports and one potential source of error in them.