Adding hope to health messages may motivate better behavior: Study
According to a study, while fear about health concerns grip people, adding a little hope to a message might make people more willing to take preventative action. The findings showed that hope and self-efficacy - the belief that a person can help themselves - significantly improve the patients' intentions to take actions. Here's more on the study.
Emotions help us do things that keep us healthy
"With health messages, it's not enough just to tell people, or merely educate them, you need to motivate them, and emotions are really good motivators," said a researcher from Pennsylvania State University. "We often think of emotions as irrational, but what our research is pointing to is that emotions can help us do things that will keep us healthy and safe," added the researcher.
What else did the study signify?
The researcher further added that it is important to understand the broad scope of emotional responses to the different type of messages and messaging components. According to the researchers, previous work indicated that while fear can grab attention and create awareness about a health problem, it might not necessarily lead to behaviors that could help people tackle the problem.
