If you want to get people to have a healthier lifestyle, it is better to tell them about the harm that not following health advice can bring or tell them about the benefits? Apparently, which message to use depends on your audience.
A health message could be centered on harm or it could be centered on a benefit. "For example, a medical doctor would be more influenced by, 'if you don't use sunscreen you are more likely to get skin cancer' because they have the knowledge base to process the message and feel a duty to maintain a healthy lifestyle," said Lizzy Pope, an associate professor at the University of Vermont and co-author of a paper on how health messages should be framed. Members of the general public might have less knowledge on the subject or first-hand knowledge of the consequences of their actions and might focus better on a message like "wearing sunscreen can help your skin stay healthy and youthful."
"Evoking fear may seem like a good way to get your message across but this study shows that, in fact, the opposite is true - telling the public that a behavior will help them be healthier and happier is actually more effective," said Brian Wansink, a professor at Cornell University and a co-author of the paper.
The paper was published in the journal Nutrition Reviews and evaluated past articles on health messages. Pope and Wansink found that they could predict which messages would be most effective for a given audience. They found that certain factors about the target audience help predict whether a benefit-based message or a harm-based message would work. This factors include how involved in the issue the audience is, whether there is a certainty of the outcome, and whether the audience has a preference for risk.
Profiling the audiences based on these factors has benefits if you are trying to get a health message across. It resolves many of the seeming inconsistencies in past studies on health messaging and it helps predict which type of message will be most effective with a given audience.