Our lab’s preprint “Short Messages Encouraging Compliance with COVID-19 Public Health Guidelines Have Minimal Effects” now online

How can we persuade people to comply with COVID guidelines? Results of 5 experiments (not yet peer-reviewed!)

https://psyarxiv.com/g93zw 

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Many efforts to encourage behavior change – PSAs, social media posts, billboards, short speeches – involve short, persuasive messages. But what types of messages are effective at convincing people to adopt COVID public health guidelines?

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In 2 studies, we use persuasiveness ratings to test 56 messages. Messages were based on past research on persuasion, recent research on COVID-19 messaging, and original crowdsourcing. Participants found messages with following frames most persuasive:

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- Responsibility to reciprocate healthcare workers’ sacrifices
- Exponential growth/the risk of cases suddenly spiking
- A story of a young, identifiable victim
- The need to protect vulnerable groups: sick, elderly, immune-compromised

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Interestingly, participants rated many messages as *less* persuasive than a control message, including appeals to patriotism, national identity, religion, the disgusting effects of the virus, and punishments for not following guidelines

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We then tested whether the top 4 messages led people who were not fully compliant with guidelines to increase their compliance intentions, compared to a null & an “active" control message in 3 between-subjects experiments (May-July).

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We *did not* find consistent effects of any of the messages compared to an active control message with a simple appeal.

However, a message emphasizing civic responsibility to reciprocate the sacrifices of healthcare workers performed the best in 3 of 5 studies.

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Here is that message, our top-performing message out of 56 tested:

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Central take-away is that the search for a “silver bullet” short message is unlikely to be fruitful in this advanced stage of the pandemic. In a dense information environment, changing the framing of a single, short message seems – in general - is not persuasive

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We suggest further research focus on more impactful approaches, such as:
- More compelling media, e.g., video
- Multiple messages
- Delivery through one-on-one conversations

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And perhaps most of all,
- Receiving messages from trusted sources, as in this study:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27496 

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Big THANKS to participants in a rapid virtual conference on COVID messaging we organized in April: @mollycrockett @AndyLuttrell5 @jayvanbavel @erezyoeli @Jill_Jord @_shanetimmons @JimACEverett @falklab @danicosme @cervisiarius @PagliaroStefano @SoubhikBarari @AhmadAbuakel et al!