Self-construals and health communications: The persuasive roles of guilt and shame

We investigate the roles of guilt and shame appeals in health communications depending on recipients’ self-construal. Although guilt and shame are negative self-conscious emotions, we hypothesize that guilt appeals are more effective in leveraging compliance among recipients with independent self-construals, whereas shame appeals are more persuasive among recipients with interdependent self-construals. The findings across four experimental studies are consistent with this hypothesis, with guilt (shame) appeals motivating participants with independent (interdependent) self-construals in domains of eating healthy, responsible drinking, quitting smoking, and staying-at-home intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, we provide evidence that challenge (threat) appraisal mediates the effect of guilt (shame) appeals among independents (interdependents). These findings have meaningful implications, more broadly in the use of emotions in health communications, and offer social marketers, government officials, and policymakers a better recognition of how to persuade individuals to improve their own and society’s well-being.