Vicarious and persuasive influences on efficacy expectations and intentions to perform breast self-examination

How Should public health campaign messages be designed to reach young women about the importance of practicing breast self-examination throughout their lives! To answer this question, an experiment was conducted by testing the impact of symbolic modeling and persuasive efficacy information on self-efficacy beliefs and intentions to perform breast self-examination. The effects of these modes of efficacy induction on fear arousal and response-outcome expectations also were assessed. Overall, symbolic modeling engendered greater efficacy expectations and behavioral intentions than did persuasive efficacy information, which in turn exceeded the control condition. Hypothesized differences among conditions on fear arousal and response-outcome expectations were not obtained. Theoretical implications for designing and pretesting breast self-examination messages during the planning and programming phase of the public relations campaign-management process are discussed. Ron Anderson is associate professor of advertising and faculty coordinator of the Program in Public Relations at the University of Texas at Austin.