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This research demonstrates that antidrinking messages that highlight potential negative emotions associated with consuming alcohol can actually have the opposite of their intended effect and lead people to consume more alcohol under certain conditions. Specifically, the authors show that emotional appeals used in antidrinking messages that emphasize potential shame-causing and guilt-causing consequences associated with drinking alcohol can induce a defensive mind-set, leading people to underestimate their own susceptibility to these outcomes and thus causing them to engage in more drinking.

The authors show that these defensive processing effects are operative under conditions of emotional compatibility. Emotional compatibility occurs when a person is experiencing shame or guilt and encounters an antidrinking message designed to elicit additional shame or guilt. People experiencing these negative emotions are motivated by a coping goal to reduce their negative emotional state, which affects how they process subsequent messages relevant to that emotion state. The authors demonstrate this effect with respect to stated drinking intentions and actual consumption of an alcoholic mixer beverage. Furthermore, they show that defensive processing results in a change in the way people assess the risks associated with their own drinking behaviors. First, the authors show that compatible appeals make people believe that the shame- or guilt-causing consequences detailed in the advertisement are less likely when people consider their own behavior and that people report a decreased likelihood of experiencing shame or guilt while drinking. These effects suggest that defensive processing is a systematic influence that affects not only processing of antidrinking messages but also perceived susceptibility to the consequences of risky drinking behaviors.

The authors gather evidence to further distinguish defensive processing from other processes documented to explain how people process negative emotion-laden stimuli. First, they show that defensive processing results in increased recall of compatible messages because these messages are highly relevant to the emotion the person is experiencing. This increased recall runs counter to existing accounts of how people process negative emotion-causing stimuli based on avoiding or ignoring the stimuli to avoid feeling worse. In addition, people bias their own risk assessments after exposure to a compatible appeal as a means of repairing their negative emotion. Thus, defensive processing is active whenever someone considers personally threatening consequences of risky drinking. The authors find that compatible appeals are effective when people consider the drinking behavior of others (i.e., resulted decreased estimates of how much others would drink).

These findings suggest that policy makers and educators should exert caution when using negative emotional appeals in the context of health communications. In contrast to previous research, which shows that such appeals may be ineffective, the authors offer a theoretical account of how such appeals can actually backfire and produce more of the behaviors they are trying to curtail.

Biography
Nidhi Agrawal is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She received her PhD from the Stern School of Business at New York University. Her research interests are related to understanding how consumers’ goals and emotions affect their decision making and behaviors.

Adam Duhachek is Nestlé-Hustad Associate Professor of Marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. He received his PhD from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Adam’s research focuses on understanding the nature of consumer coping processes and on various psychometric issues.

Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 47, Number 2, April 2010
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