Understanding text-based persuasion and support tactics of concerned significant others
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Neuroscience, Cognitive Disorders, Neurology, Psychiatry and Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction
- Keywords
- Concerned Significant Others, behavior change, computer-based communication, language expectancy, supportive communication, technology
- Copyright
- © 2015 van Stolk-Cooke et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Understanding text-based persuasion and support tactics of concerned significant others. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1227v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1227v1
Abstract
The behavior of concerned significant others (CSOs) can have a measurable impact on the health and wellness of individuals attempting to meet behavioral and health goals, and research is needed to better understand the attributes of text-based CSO language when encouraging target significant others (TSOs) to achieve those goals. In an effort to inform the development of interventions for CSOs, this study examined the language content of brief text-based messages generated by CSOs to motivate TSOs to achieve a behavioral goal. CSOs generated brief text-based messages for TSOs for three scenarios: (1) to help TSOs achieve the goal, (2) in the event that the TSO is struggling to meet the goal, and (3) in the event that the TSO has given up on meeting the goal. Results indicate that there was a significant relationship between the tone and compassion of messages generated by CSOs, the CSOs’ perceptions of TSO motivation, and their expectation of a grateful or annoyed reaction by the TSO to their feedback or support. Results underscore the importance of attending to patterns in language when CSOs communicate with TSOs about goal achievement or failure, and how certain variables in the CSOs’ perceptions of their TSOs affect these characteristics.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.