Listening instead of reading: The development and testing of tailored auditory persuasive communication applied to fruit and vegetable consumption.

In health education, the visual mode is normally the dominant mode of information processing: Receivers read or watch the persuasive information that is provided on paper or on screen. A lot is known about how people process information through the visual mode and what the optimal strategies are to persuade receivers using the visual mode. However, besides through this visual mode, persuasive information can be processed through the auditory mode, presented through an auditory channel. In that case, the recipient listens to a voice that provides information, while no visual cues are available. The problem is that in health education and persuasion, the auditory mode has hardly been studied and used practically. Especially against the background of the developments with regard to the increased availability and accessibility of auditory channels, this is a missed opportunity. That is, the more different channels are used to communicate health messages to people, the higher the chance that people find and use a channel that fits their preference. New technological developments make the use of auditory persuasion (AP) easy and the reach very broad. That is, CD-Rom, DVD but more importantly MP3 are technological advances that are broadly disseminated in modern society and used by millions of people. MP3 technology is now included in easy portable MP3-players, car radios, at-home sounds systems and in as good as all mobile phones. Thus, the potential reach of MP3 as the channel for auditory information is enormous. This project will gather basic and applied knowledge on the auditory mode in persuasive health education. One central feature of AP makes it fundamentally different from other types of persuasion: The peripheral cues it contains. As other types of persuasion, AP contains content information as well as peripheral cues that form a context of the content information. While the content information may not differ from the arguments and recommendations used in textual/written persuasion, the peripheral cues differ essentially. While in written persuasion font type, lay-out, pictures, colors, and other visual aspects are peripheral cues that can motivate people and influence their interpretation of the information that is provided, in the case of AP, the recipient has to rely primarily on auditory cues. That is, the voice of the messenger now is the most important peripheral cue. In addition, background music is also expected to be an influential peripheral cue. New psychological patterns may emerge when using the auditory mode only, because the powerful and often dominant visual mode is not activated. New knowledge on the psychological processes involved in AP will be derived from the proposed experimental studies. Furthermore, the experiments will culminate in a web-based tailored AP system aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable consumption that can be applied in society immediately and at present the “Voedingscentrum” (the Netherlands Nutrition Center) is interested in studying the possible implementation of this AP system. In addition, this system can be regarded as a prototype for the development of tailored AP systems with regard to other topics, for example, smoking cessation, reduction of fat consumption and physical exercise. Lastly, the technology of tailored AP will be developed. The project contains 5 experiments in five consecutive studies to explore and test different aspects of AP. The first four experiments are conducted among students in the controlled setting in the laboratory, the fifth experiment among the general audience in the field with a follow-up of 6 months. In study 1, an experiment will be conducted to test hypotheses about the persuasiveness of a set of voice characteristics; gender, speed and intonation. In study 2, it is tested whether mentioning the source of the AP (i.e., the owner of the voice) influences persuasiveness. The health professional and the lay-person will be tested as sources. In study 3, the effects of background music on persuasiveness of AP is tested. The effects of music on persuasion are expected to be mediated by mood and by the extent to which the listener identifies with the (type of) music. In study 4, the findings from the first three studies are integrated and it is tested whether tailoring of the AP increases persuasiveness. The three tailoring ingredients personalization, adaptation and feedback will be tested. Finally, the findings from all four earlier studies are integrated and the resulting tailored AP system will be tested in a field experiment with a 6-months follow-up, against a measurement-only and a control group. In all studies, the AP advocates fruit and vegetable consumption.