PERIPHERAL CUES AND INVOLVEMENT LEVEL - INFLUENCES ON ACCEPTANCE OF AMAMMOGRAPHY MESSAGE

The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) suggests that some communicatio n elements are processed differently depending on a receiver's involve ment with the message topic. We hypothesized that women with high leve ls of breast cancer involvement would be more influenced by a mammogra phy message's arguments than by the message's peripheral cues and, con versely, that women with low levels of involvement would be more influ enced by a mammography message's peripheral cues than by the message's arguments. We exposed 89 low-income African American women aged 40 to 65 years to two repetitions of a mammography promotion public service announcement embedded as a commercial within a television talk show. We used a 2 (involvement level) x 2 (argument strength) x 2 (periphera l cue favorability) factorial posttest-only design. The analysis detec ted a significant main effect for involvement and an interaction betwe en peripheral cue favorability and involvement. High-involvement women reported stronger intentions than did low-involvement women to seek a dditional mammography information, regardless of argument strength or cue favorability. Low-involvement women reported stronger intentions t o seek more mammography information only when exposed to the favorable cue condition The analysis detected no effect for argument strength i n high-or low-involvement women. The ELM appears useful for designing mammography messages. As many women may have low involvement with brea st cancer, mammography promotion messages that include favorable perip heral cues may be more likely to impact mammography information seekin g than argument-based-only messages.