Attitude-Consistent Health Messages About Electronic Cigarettes Increase Processing Time Perceiving Message Senders as Socially Close Increases Message Recall

Online contexts are becoming a widely available space to disseminate health information and target specific populations for health campaigns. Limited evidence for health message engagement in these contexts exists. This study draws on the elaboration likelihood model and construal-level theory to predict processing time and recall when individuals are presented with messages for or against electronic cigarette use from socially close or distant sources. Participants (N = 159) were shown messages about electronic cigarettes, designed to look like tweets, from socially close and socially distant message senders. Processing times were highest for pro-attitudinal messages while messages from socially close sources were more likely to be recalled, and furthering social distance increased the difference in processing times for pro- and counter-attitudinal messages. We demonstrate the applicability of behavioral measures in online studies, while finding that attitudes, social distance, and their interaction affect measures of message processing. These findings suggest further exploration may be needed to differentiate between processing time and counterarguing. From our findings, we offer applied practitioners guidance on how to develop messages that target audiences will spend more time considering and are more likely to remember.