5 Mistakes in Messaging That Is Designed to Persuade

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Behavioral economics has shed light on the reality that psychologists (and other scientists) can get things wrong. In one study, I set out to persuade people in a specific way but ended up persuading them in other often conflicting ways. Given the complexity of human beings and the intricate web of factors that motivate our thoughts and behaviors, unintended consequences are unsurprising.

In my study that attempted to deploy message framing to influence attitudes and behaviors towards refugees, my co-author and I found that sometimes our frames backfired; a message intended to persuade the reader to think and act more favorably towards refugees seemed to lead participants to become more unfavorable. Naturally, I have reflected on why this might be, and have found other studies that have reported similar unintended effects. Because practitioners in the field are becoming more open about this contributes to the remedy of the situation that birthed psychology’s “replication crisis.”

1. Incongruence

Reflecting on my experiment, I believe that message incongruence played a role in the unintended effect. We had set out to use moral foundations theory to inform message framing. When we framed messages using the moral foundations of care and fairness, two values traditionally associated with positive views on refugees, message framing was successful. Individuals who scored highly in these values thought and acted even more positively toward refugees when reading the frames that deployed them.

The more impressive and consequential finding would have been the ability to use framing to “overturn” negative attitudes toward refugees. Despite other studies reporting having done this successfully, we were not able to and found that these attempts backfired and led to entrenchment in anti-refugee sentiment. This might have been due to incongruence. For some, advocating for better treatment of refugees didn’t make sense when framed as beneficial to the nation, the in-group, or as an issue of authority—moral foundations that typically correlate with negative views on refugees. Rather than incongruence, Sunstein (2017) suggests a not-too-distant alternative; people do not like nudges that are inconsistent with their own values.

This highlights the limits of message framing; ultimately, a simple reframing is not normally strong enough to overturn an individual’s moral values or convictions.

2. Inadvertent Priming

Another potential source of our finding is priming. When our participants were reading keywords that reflected certain moral foundations, such as the importance of the nation, and the in-group, these values might have become activated for readers. This is despite our framing attempts to make a case for pro-refugee sentiment using these moral foundation-laden words.

Source: Brett Jordan/Unsplash

This highlights the importance of being aware of the words being used, despite what we think is the conclusion we are portraying. Words carry standalone persuasive power that can be divorced from our intended use.

3. Stoking Reactance

Steindl and colleagues (2015) define reactance as: “unpleasant motivational arousal that emerges when people experience a threat to or loss of their free behaviors. It serves as a motivator to restore one’s freedom.”

If messaging is coming on too strong, or people perceive it as infringing on their personal freedom, they are liable to push back against it. This has been reported by studies such as Banerjee and colleagues (2023); the authors reported that people who were already motivated to eat sustainably reacted negatively to nudges that further drove behavior towards sustainable eating.

This highlights the value of a deft touch when it comes to messaging; forceful messaging is likelier to stir reactance, especially in certain (liberty-championing) cultures.

4. Wrong Emotional Appeal

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ran what looked to be an incredibly successful campaign for emergency preparedness. While the campaign was designed to raise awareness of what to do in a hurricane or flood, they utilized humor and turned this into a warning about a zombie apocalypse. This campaign succeeded on one measure, message reach—driven by humor, memorability, and novelty. However, a follow-up study (Fraustino and Ma, 2015) reported that while many saw the campaign, those who did were less likely to report readiness to take protective action when compared to individuals who received a traditional, “non-humorous” message. The very reason the message spread so far, its humor, might have contributed to its failing as an adequate warning.

This highlights the importance of getting the emotional component of messaging right, and the need to consider the trade-off between reach and actual behavioral impact.

5. Focusing on the Wrong Aspect

Choosing which aspect of an idea your messaging should focus on, and which specific terms to use, can be a sensitive business. For example, Sleboda and colleagues (2024) set out to make vegan food sound more appealing. They found that labeling it as such—either vegan or plant-based—did the opposite. However, when instead of using these labels, they focused on the benefits of the food, such as healthy or sustainable, people were significantly more likely to choose these options.

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This highlights the need to be cognizant of which aspects of your message are appealing and which are not. More broadly, who your audience is, and how they think, is critical.

Ultimately, these experimental findings drive home the importance of testing and evaluation. Landing your message most persuasively is both art and science, and there is little room for untested assumptions and a closed mind.