Action Tendency Emotions Evoked by Memorable Breast Cancer Messages and their Association with

Prevention and Detection Behaviors

Sandi Smith, Lauren Hamel, Michael Kotowski, Samantha Nazione, Carolyn LaPlante, Charles Atkin, Cynthia Stohl,

& Christine Skubisz.

This research was supported by the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers grant number U01 ES012800 from the National Institute of

Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH, DHHS. 

Memorable Messages

• Messages which are remembered for long periods of time

• Can serve as guides to behavior – Control theory

• Women with personal experience and with close friends or relatives who had experiences with breast cancer were more likely to recall memorable messages about breast cancer– Messages about awareness, early detection,

prevention, and treatment – With purposes of giving facts, advice, or hope– From media and interpersonal sources

Emotions

• Emotions - Internal mental states that result from an evaluation of people, events, or objects (and we extend to messages here)

• Emotions can be divided into goal incongruent emotions (negative emotions) and goal congruent emotions (positive emotions) – Negative – anger, sadness, fear– Positive – hope, relief

• Separate emotions are postulated to have different problem-solving action tendencies

Action Tendencies

• Anger can elicit problem solving behaviors • Sadness can slow cognitive functioning and lead

to problem solving behaviors• Fear can be debilitating at high levels but a

moderate amount can motivate problem solving or problem avoiding behaviors

• Hope has no clear action tendency but it is thought to be associated with action toward what one desires

• Relief results in very little action

Methods

• 359 female participants took an online survey – Mostly Caucasian, middle-aged women who had

completed at least some college – 60% had a memorable message about breast cancer

and were asked about characteristics of it such as emotions it evoked.

– Asked about detection and prevention behaviors

• Topics, sources, and emotions of memorable messages were coded reliably (Kappa ranged from .81 to 1)

Results: Evoked emotions

• The top two evoked emotions were sadness and fear

• Emotions were most frequently evoked by messages from interpersonal sources such as friends and family but also from medical professionals and media sources

• Sadness was evoked most highly by detection messages, fear by prevention messages, and hope by treatment messages

Results

• H1: Contrary to expectation, memorable messages about breast cancer that evoked anger were not associated with prevention and detection behaviors.

• H2: Also contrary to expectation, memorable messages about breast cancer that evoked sadness were not associated with prevention and detection behaviors

Results: H3&4

• H3: Partially consistent with expectation, women with memorable messages about breast cancer that evoked fear were more likely to engage in detection behaviors than those whose messages did not evoke fear, however they were not more likely to report prevention behaviors.

• H4: Contrary to expectation, women with memorable messages about breast cancer that evoked negative emotions (anger, sadness or fear) were not more likely to report prevention and detection behaviors than those whose messages evoked positive emotions (hope or relief).

Results: RQ1&2

• RQ1: Will women with memorable messages about breast cancer that evoked hope be more likely to report prevention and detection behaviors than those whose messages did not evoke hope? The answer is no.

• RQ2: Will women with memorable messages about breast cancer that evoked relief be more likely to report prevention and detection behaviors than those whose messages did not evoke relief? – Women recalling memorable messages evoking relief were not

any more likely to report prevention behaviors – Women recalling memorable messages that evoked relief were

less likely to report that they engaged in detection behaviors

Discussion

• This research adds to past emotion research – Fear and sadness were most frequently evoked – Sadness was mostly evoked by detection messages, fear by

prevention messages, and hope by treatment messages.– Interpersonal sources of memorable messages that evoke

emotions are powerful

• Messages that invoked fear were positively associated and messages that evoked relief were negatively associated with detection behaviors

• There is a trend for actions to occur most when a negative emotion is evoked, less so when a positive emotion is evoked, but least when no emotion is evoked

Conclusion

• There is promise for the strategic use of message type, source, and evoked action tendency emotions in breast cancer interventions

• Family and friends are powerful sources of memorable messages about breast cancer

• Fear is the emotion most likely to lead to action• Further emotion and memorable message

research is necessary in health and other contexts