Emerging Trends in Health Communication: The Powerful Role of Subjectivism in Moderating the Effectiveness of Persuasive Health Appeals

In this article, we draw from key lessons in social psychology in order to organize emerging trends in health communication. A quarter century ago, Ross and Nisbett (1991) distilled social psychology's major insights into three fundamental principles: situationism, subjectivism, and tension systems. The principle of subjectivism – the idea that to predict and successfully change behavior, we must first appreciate a person's understanding of a given situation – is of particular importance and has the potential to bring together health-related investigations of (i) message framing, (ii) regulatory focus, (iii) construal level, and (iv) psychological mindset. These lines of research are readily applied to goal setting and self-regulation, and they illustrate the powerful role of subjectivism in determining the effectiveness of health communication. We summarize this research and discuss how a better appreciation of subjectivism illuminates these investigations and gives rise to a cohesive set of implications for designing more persuasive health appeals.