Calibrating the moral compass: the effect of tailored communications on non-profit advertising

Abstract

A growing body of scholarship focuses on influencing people to behave prosocially. Researchers typically take a one-size-fits-all approach even though domains such as health and communication have shown a greater persuasive impact of tailored messages. The dual process theory of moral judgment (DPT; Greene, Summerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001) is a theoretical framework that outlines how people make moral decisions, and provides guidance on determining the variables to use to tailor prosocial messaging. Previous DPT research indicates that priming emotion and cognition can influence moral judgment (e.g., Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008; Guzak, 2015; Paxton, Ungar, & Green, 2011; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2006). Based on these findings, three studies, consisting of six experiments, tested predictions that matching messaging to an individual’s psychological state will be an effective way to increase prosocial behavior. Study 1 built on previous DPT literature to create and test psychological state manipulations to prime negative emotion and cognitive reflection. Results indicated that those primed to cognitively reflect using a computational task were more likely to focus on moral consequences of a trolley dilemma compared to a control group. Study 2 used a current charity advertisement and predicted that psychological state would influence people’s processing of the same ad differently. Further, Study 2 predicted those primed to cognitively reflect would behave more prosocially because the ad focused on moral consequences. Qualitative analyses indicated that people processed the same prosocial communication differently such that people primed to feel negative emotion reported more emotional responses than people primed to cognitively reflect. No support was found for the hypothesis that matching the state of cognitive reflection to moral consequences led to higher levels of prosociality. Study 3 tested the full matched message approach by conducting a between-subjects factorial design comparing psychological state (i.e., emotion vs. cognition) to message type (i.e., rules vs. consequences). Hypotheses were partially supported by a significant interaction between psychological state and message type on attitudes. Those primed to cognitively reflect had more favorable attitudes toward a charity focused on moral consequences compared to a charity focused on moral rules. However, data did not support the second matched-message condition since no effect was found for the negative emotion prime leading to more favorable attitudes for a moral rules charity compared to a moral consequences charity. A marginally significant interaction was also found when looking at low effort donation intentions in the same pattern as the interaction on attitudes. No interaction effect was found for high effort intentions. A moderated mediation model analysis was conducted and the pathway between attitudes and low effort intentions was statistically significant, indicating that the interaction between state and message type influenced attitudes, which subsequently influenced low effort intentions. Together, the results of the current dissertation partially support the notion that matching the message type (i.e., focused on rules or consequences of a moral scenario) to people’s psychological state (i.e., emotional or cognitive) increases the effectiveness of the persuasive message, which has implications for the DPT and in nonprofit marketing communications.