When more is not better: three common mistakes in health messaging interventions

Katherine Farrow (1) , Gilles G. Grolleau (2) , Naoufel Mzoughi (3)

1 UPN - Université Paris Nanterre
2 CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier
3 ECODEVELOPPEMENT - Ecodéveloppement

Health messaging interventions frequently make three well-intentioned but mistaken choices in their communications strategies. To increase their persuasiveness, these messages frequently call attention to the greatest possible numbers of people engaging in undesirable behavior, victims of this behavior, and reasons why one should change the behavior. We raise recent research suggesting how and why the intuitively attractive more-is-better heuristic can be unproductive, and suggest ways to overcome these pitfalls.

Keywords: health messaging campaigns; persuasion; identifiability bias; social norms

Domains: Library and information sciences; Santé publique et épidémiologie; Economics and Finance

Katherine Farrow, Gilles G. Grolleau, Naoufel Mzoughi. When more is not better: three common mistakes in health messaging interventions. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 2019, 45 (1), pp.143-152. ⟨10.1215/03616878-7893619⟩. ⟨hal-02355851⟩