2018/02/01 by Joseph McGlynn, Matthew S. McGlone
Business, Management and Accounting · Health Professions · Psychology · #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology #Obesity and Health Practices
paper · doi:10.1080/10410236.2018.1431025
openalex publication_date 2018/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The way we describe health threats affects perceptions of severity and preferred solutions to reduce risk. Most people agree obesity is a problem, but differ in how they attribute responsibility for development and decline of the disease. We explored effects of message framing on attributions of responsibility and support for public obesity policies using a 3 × 2 factorial design. Participants read one of six versions of a health message describing the negative effects of obesity. Message frames influenced respondent attributions and their support for policies to reduce obesity. Those who read a message that assigned agency to the disease (e.g., Obesity causes health problems) endorsed genetics as the cause to a greater degree than those who read a semantically equivalent message that instead assigned agency to people (e.g., Obese people develop health problems). In contrast, assigning agency to people rather than to the disease prompted higher attributions of individual responsibility and support for public policies. Explicit message frames that directly connected responsibility for obesity to either individual or societal factors had no effect on respondent perceptions. Findings suggest explicit arguments may be less effective in shifting perceptions of health threats than arguments embedded in agentic message frames. The results demonstrate specific message features that influence how people attribute responsibility for the onset and solution of obesity.