The role of emotions in health-promoting behavior campaigns | Fact-sheets collection from the Portuguese COVID-19 pandemic Task Force on Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

Behavioral activation requires both cognitive and emotional processes. Fast and automatic decisions are highly dependent of emotional stata and, therefore, emotion activation is widely used in marketing initiatives. Health promotion campaigns traditionally opted by using threatening messages, aiming to raise awareness of health risks and to promote adherence to health behaviors. However, the evidence does not support the hypothesis that using fear-inducing messages promotes systematically the expected health protection behavior. Instead, the use of messages promoting positive emotions associated with the target behavior should be the first choice for health promotion programs. The effect of messages on emotional experiencing should be tested as much as possible (considering most vulnerable groups), before launching large-scale campaigns, as well as its effectiveness on the desired health behavior activation.