Implicit and explicit believability of prevention messages for breast cancer and heart disease

Abstract

Background: This research examined implicit and explicit believability of messages about physical activity (PA) and healthy body weight as preventative of heart disease (HD) or breast cancer (BC); and the relationship of believability to attitudes and intentions toward PA and weight loss. Methods: Female adults read HD and BC prevention messages, completed corresponding implicit believability tasks, questionnaires about message attention, believability, and involvement with the messages, and attitudes and intentions for PA (N = 98) and weight loss (N = 48). Findings: No differences in implicit or explicit believability existed between HD and BC messages. Affective attitudes (β=.494) and implicit believability (β= .328) of the HD message were significant predictors of PA intentions; implicit believability (β=.288) and involvement with (β=.384) the HD messages and attention paid to the BC messages (β=.277) predicted instrumental PA attitudes. Regarding weight loss intentions, affective attitudes (β=.388) was the only predictor; but explicit believability (β=.619) and attention (β= -.313) paid to BC messages were related to affective attitudes and explicit believability of HD (β=.413) and BC messages (β=.401) were related to instrumental attitudes. Discussion: Implicit and explicit believability of HD and BC prevention messages are equally strong, and implicit believability of HD messages is related to instrumental PA attitudes and intentions. The relationship of implicit believability of HD messages, but not BC messages, to PA intentions may come from the focus media and health promoters place on lifestyle factors as preventative of HD, whereas BC messages are more often human interest stories about ‘survivors’.