A comparison of health communication models: Risk learning versus stereotype priming

Health communication research and practice have been strongly influenced by the protection motivation theory (Rogers, 1975, 1983), the health belief m odel (Becker Haefner; Kasl, et al., 1977; Pecker Haefner & Maiman, 1977; Ro senstock, 1974), and similar conceptualizations. I refer to these as risk l earning models because the goal is to reach new information about health ri sks and the behaviors that will minimize those risks. These models have gar nered a substantial amount of empirical support and are apparently quite us eful to practitioners (Conner di Norman, 1996). The goal of this article is to describe a less familiar but complementary, approach to persuading peop le to avoid risky behaviors, which I will refer to as the stereotype primin g model (Bargh, 1989; Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Bargh, Raymond, Pryor, & Strack, 1995). The goal is to make salient preexisting social stereotypes about people who do or do not behave as advocated. The stereotype priming model posits that the stereotypes that we possess re garding the personality traits of groups of people (e.g., smokers, drunk dr ivers, marijuana users, people with suntans) to a large extent govern our b ehavior: In this view, it is sometimes useful to capitalize on and reinforc e preexisting stereotypes in order to encourage healthy, and/or discourage unhealthy, behaviors. This article reviews the traditional risk learning models and evidence that supports them, provides corresponding information for the stereotype primi ng model, compares and contrasts the models, and discusses how the stereoty pe priming model might be used to design health communications campaigns.