The Behavior of Same-Race Others and Its Effects on Black Patients' Attention to Publicly Presented HIV-Prevention Information

Black Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population, yet account for 54% of HIV deaths and 44% of new HIV diagnoses. Why do Black Americans die from HIV at such a disproportionate rate? In the current study, we asked whether the presence and behavior of in-group peers in public health settings may influence Black Americans' attention to HIV information, given the racialized nature of HIV-stigma in Black American communities. In a quasi-experimental field study conducted in a public health clinic (N = 260), we found that Black patients were less likely to pay attention to HIV-prevention information in the presence of other Black patients, unless those patients were also paying attention to the information. In contrast, Black patients' attention was unaffected by the presence of White patients. We end by discussing the implications of these findings for health communication theories and health practice geared toward reducing racial-health disparities in the United States.

Effect of Extraneous Affect on Health Message Reception

People often avoid paying attention to health messages. One reason is that health messages can evoke negative affect, which produces avoidance. Prior efforts to reduce disengagement focused on changing message content or buffering the self from threat, producing mixed effects. The present studies test whether inducing positively valenced, low-arousal affect independently of the message or the self, labeled extraneous affect, promotes health message receptivity. Across four studies (total N = 1,447), participants who briefly meditated (vs. a control listening task) paid more attention to messages (Study 1). Increased positive valence facilitated attention, which subsequently increased message comprehension (Studies 2-4), whereas reduced arousal directly increased message comprehension. These effects generalized across extraneous affect manipulations, settings, information domains, and levels of message threat. Taken together, extraneous affect can be leveraged to promote message receptivity. This contributes to a theoretical understanding of how affect impacts persuasion.