Emotive health advertising and message resistance

Health-promotion advertising campaigns often induce high levels of negative affect to stimulate self-regulation of unhealthy behaviours. Although the use of negative emotion may increase the salience and accessibility of camp aign messages, there is also a risk that it may induce resistance toward th ose messages. This paper describes four specific forms of resistance: repre ssion, defensive processing, downward comparison, and reactance. Each may b e triggered by emotive stimuli, and each can impair aspects of message rece ption or processing. Thus, negative emotion may inhibit the likelihood of s elf-change rather than enhance it. Recommendations for the conduct of adver tising campaigns and future research are made.