ATTITUDE FORMATION AND CHANGE 83At first sight, the above might suggest that the central route pertains to cognitive attitude
formation (people think carefully about the substance of the message), while peripheral-
route processing is more likely to give rise to affective attitude formation (people rely on how
the ad makes them feel instead of what the ad really tells). However, reality reveals a more
complicated picture. The ELM, as well as other models such as Chaiken’s Heuristic–Systematic
model (HSM), and Forgas’s Affect Infusion model (AIM), assume that, under different MAO
conditions, both arguments and affect may give rise to peripheral and central (and even
biased) processing.^32 It is not so much the MAO factors, but consumers’ goals that might
determine whether consumers rely on the substance of the message (i.e. the strength of the
claims, the compellingness of the product attributes, etc.) to form a judgement or on their
affective responses (i.e. ad-evoked feelings, aesthetic of the product design, charisma of the
endorser, etc.). Recent research shows that when individuals focus on ideals (promotion
goals, relating to one’s hopes, wishes and aspirations, such as dreaming of a nice house, an
exotic holiday, etc.), they consider affective information as more relevant than the substance
of the message and, as a consequence, are more likely to base their evaluation on affect. On
the other hand, when consumers’ ‘oughts’ (prevention goals, relating to one’s duties, obliga-
tions and responsibilities, such as providing for a child’s education, looking professional at
work) are their driving goal, the opposite result is found.^33In health campaigns, a fear–relief appeal is often used. This message starts by focusing on negative con-
sequences of a risk behaviour and ends with offering a solution via behavioural recommendations. However,
due to mixed results, there is a lot of discussion about its overall effectiveness. It is often suggested that a valuable
contribution could result from adopting a segmentation approach in which an individual differences perspective
is taken.
A recent study examined whether taking into account individuals’ chronic self-regulatory focus could contribute
to the effectiveness of health messages. Although previous research indicates that promotion people tend to rely
more on affect than prevention people, it was argued that, by using ads with an emotional tone that is compatible
with a prevention focus in the stimuli, affect could work for prevention people as well. Therefore, in line with the
regulatory relevancy principle, the emotional tone of the test ads was matched to the chronic self-regulatory focus
of the audience. More specifically, it was expected that fear–relief ads would work better for prevention people
because these emotions are more compatible with their regulatory focus, whereas sadness–joy ads were expected
to have more impact in promotion people because dejection and cheerfulness emotions match better with a promo-
tion focus.
A first study focused on anti-smoking campaigns. The results of an experiment with 256 student smokers
indeed indicated a congruency effect: smokers with a promotion focus felt more involved with the sadness–joy
than with the fear–relief campaign leading to a more positive attitude towards the sadness–joy campaign than
towards the fear–relief campaign, and vice versa for smokers with a prevention focus. A second study focused on
sun protection campaigns, and 1386 women aged between 24 and 38 participated in the experiment. Also here,
an emotion–congruency trend appeared, but only for high users of sun beds. The conclusion of both studies is
that emotional health campaigns can work for promotion and prevention people on the condition that the
ad-evoked emotions match consumers’ regulatory focus and consumers feel highly and affectively involved in the
subject matter.^34researCh insight
The impact of self-regulatory focus in health campaignsM03_PELS3221_05_SE_C03.indd 83 6/5/13 3:03 PM