Effects of Gain-and-Loss framing Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Messages and Issue Involvement on Behavioral and Electrophysiological Measures of Attention and Implicit Attitudes: Event-Related Potential Study (Preprint)

Abstract

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is detrimental to genital and cervical health. gain-and-loss framing research has yielded limited findings regarding ways to systematically influence vaccine acceptance (uptake) and acceptability (attitudes and intentions) to promote the HPV vaccine. However, potential moderating variables need to be considered. This study was designed to overcome previous limitations by exploring the role of personal involvement with HPV issues and the gain-and-loss framework in cognitive effects through an electrophysiological study.

The main objectives of this study were (1) to evaluate the effect of gain-and-loss frameworks on HPV immunization messages for college students with different levels of issue involvement on brain and cognitive processes, including attention and implicit attitudes, using behavioral and electrophysiological recordings (event-related potentials, ERPs); (2) to examine the cognitive process and attention allocation on gain-and-loss framing HPV messages and to further test the distinct persuasive routes of the elaboration likelihood model; and (3) to provide empirical evidence of design strategies for HPV immunization messages with regard to implicit social cognition bias about the different frames.

In a mixed between-subjects experimental design, 40 participants were recruited into 2 (frames: gain vs. loss) × 2 (involvement: high vs. low issue involvement) groups. During the message exposure, brain activity was measured by electroencephalography as the participants were asked to conduct a 3-tone passive auditory oddball task. The amount of attention allocation was measured by event-related potentials (ERPs) (i.e., P300 amplitude) toward novelty stimuli. To further explore the implicit attitudes of the 4 groups, an implicit association test (IAT) was adopted and measured by D-scores.

For the P300 amplitude, the results showed that loss-framed messages elicited a larger P300 amplitude of novel stimuli than gain-framed ones (F1, 28 = 5.61, P=.03). The D-score results indicated that the IAT D-score of the gain-framed messages was also significantly higher than that of loss frames (F1, 36 =6.10, P =.02). Under the condition of the high-issue involvement group, the D-score of gain-framed messages was significantly larger than that of loss frames (P =.002).

The P300 effect suggests that gain-framed messages receive more attention from participants than loss-framed messages. The results of the IAT demonstrate that individuals with high-issue involvement are likely to find elaboration on gain-framed information. From the perspective of loss aversion, this study found a positive bias in health-promoting information: gain-framed messages tend to have more message elaboration than loss-framed messages and might arouse positive attitudes toward HPV vaccination.