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This study examined the usefulness of the stage of change model and protection motivation theory (PMT) in creating brief persuasive appeals to promote healthy sun-behavior. College women (N = 254) read one of four essays that manipulated the level of threat and coping appraisal. The transition from the precontemplation to contemplation stage was promoted by threat appraisal information, but transition from contemplation to the preparation stage occurred only when individuals were provided with both high threat and high coping information. Thus, brief communications based on PMT may create attitudes leading to behavior change when later, more intensive, interventions are introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the effects of deindividuation, modeling and private self consciousness on social responses. The study suggests that the deindividuation construct is useful when attempting to understand why individuals engage in collective aggression. This also showed that the situational manipulations designed to reduce private self-awareness are powerful which may affect behavior more than the dispositional levels of private self-consciousness. Methods of using systematic investigation would also suggest to reduce the occurrence of antisocial actions and promote the incidence of altruistic responding among group members.

This experiment compared the effectiveness of appearance-based messages focusing on the benefits of tanning and the efficacy of preventive measures on students' intentions to protect themselves against sun-induced skin damage. Subjects who were high or low on a dispositional measure of appearance concern responded to 1 of 4 essays providing either high or low benefits information, and high or low efficacy information. Overall, subjects low in appearance concern expressed greater intentions to take precautionary measures than did those high in appearance concern. Additionally, the low benefits of tanning message produced greater intentions to take precautions than did the high benefits message. The benefits results suggest 1 mechanism through which sun protection behaviors may be encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the more comprehensive and extensively investigated models, the Health Belief Model (HBM) and Protection Motivation Theory (PMT). The HBM consists of four components, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits and perceived barriers. PMT shares the HBM's emphasis on the cognitive processes mediating attitudinal and behavioral change. The authors suggests that both models are variations on the general category of expectancy-value theories. The two theories also share several components. PMT's component of severity is similar to HBM's concept of severity or seriousness, except that one index of seriousness of a health threat is emotional arousal. PMT assigns a less important, more indirect role to emotional arousal. Despite these similarities, there are several important differences between the two models.