April 4-6, 2024 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Innovations in Health Communication
Innovations in Health Communication
Abstract: Be a Hero! Cultivating Prosocial Motivation in Health Messaging
Many medical advancements, treatments, and life-saving procedures rely to some extent on a person deciding to do a good deed. These good deeds range from giving blood to joining a clinical trial. What makes a person decide to do that good deed? Finding out what motivates people to do a prosocial health behavior and measuring that motivation is the focus of this research.
Drilling down on prosocial motivation is innovative for three reasons. First, because health persuasion research is mainly about enacting behaviors for personal benefit, how to foster behaviors for others’ benefit is underexplored. Second, understanding the components of prosocial motivation is useful for communicating about public health, nonprofit goals, and health behaviors that benefit both the individual and the collective (such as vaccination). Third, prosocial motivation—the desire to benefit others (Grant, 2008)—has been found to be an effective predictor of behavior in various contexts but not in a health context (Nelson-Coffey et al., 2021). This project conceptualizes prosocial motivation in a health communication context and operationalizes reliable measures for future research.
We developed a scale to measure prosocial motivation based on Batson et al.’s (2008) four types of motivation: egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism. Each dimension was operationalized based on previous studies, resulting in a total of 52 items. To test the validity and reliability of the scale, we conducted a survey with 401 U.S. adults who had previously participated in prosocial health behaviors, such as donating blood (not for compensation) or registering to be an organ donor.
An exploratory factor analysis was performed, employing the principle axis factoring extraction and the Promax rotation on all 52 items to uncover the prominent dimensions of prosocial motivation. Items with loadings <0.4 or significant cross-loadings were removed, resulting in a 42-item scale. The 4-factor model demonstrated satisfactory levels of internal consistency.
Findings: The four factors closely align with the motivations outlined in self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), and we adapted its ideas to label the current four factors as they relate to prosocial health behaviors. The four factors (in order of importance to participants) include motivated by conscious value (e.g., I care about helping others); motivated by extrinsic reward (e.g., I want something in return); motivated by impression (e.g., I want to look good to others and to myself); and motivated by intrinsic pleasure (e.g., I enjoy it). Being motivated by conscious value and by pleasure are on the autonomous and self-determined side of the scale and don’t require external involvement. Being motivated by impression and reward are less autonomous and more determined by external forces.
According to self-determination theory, motivations that are more autonomous and self-determined are more likely to predict lasting personal health behavior change (Ng et al., 2012). When applied to prosocial health behavior motivations, however, our findings indicate that a combination of self- and externally-determined motivations are likely more suitable. Confirmatory factor analyses will be carried out to further refine the items associated with each dimension ahead of the conference.
Drilling down on prosocial motivation is innovative for three reasons. First, because health persuasion research is mainly about enacting behaviors for personal benefit, how to foster behaviors for others’ benefit is underexplored. Second, understanding the components of prosocial motivation is useful for communicating about public health, nonprofit goals, and health behaviors that benefit both the individual and the collective (such as vaccination). Third, prosocial motivation—the desire to benefit others (Grant, 2008)—has been found to be an effective predictor of behavior in various contexts but not in a health context (Nelson-Coffey et al., 2021). This project conceptualizes prosocial motivation in a health communication context and operationalizes reliable measures for future research.
We developed a scale to measure prosocial motivation based on Batson et al.’s (2008) four types of motivation: egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism. Each dimension was operationalized based on previous studies, resulting in a total of 52 items. To test the validity and reliability of the scale, we conducted a survey with 401 U.S. adults who had previously participated in prosocial health behaviors, such as donating blood (not for compensation) or registering to be an organ donor.
An exploratory factor analysis was performed, employing the principle axis factoring extraction and the Promax rotation on all 52 items to uncover the prominent dimensions of prosocial motivation. Items with loadings <0.4 or significant cross-loadings were removed, resulting in a 42-item scale. The 4-factor model demonstrated satisfactory levels of internal consistency.
Findings: The four factors closely align with the motivations outlined in self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), and we adapted its ideas to label the current four factors as they relate to prosocial health behaviors. The four factors (in order of importance to participants) include motivated by conscious value (e.g., I care about helping others); motivated by extrinsic reward (e.g., I want something in return); motivated by impression (e.g., I want to look good to others and to myself); and motivated by intrinsic pleasure (e.g., I enjoy it). Being motivated by conscious value and by pleasure are on the autonomous and self-determined side of the scale and don’t require external involvement. Being motivated by impression and reward are less autonomous and more determined by external forces.
According to self-determination theory, motivations that are more autonomous and self-determined are more likely to predict lasting personal health behavior change (Ng et al., 2012). When applied to prosocial health behavior motivations, however, our findings indicate that a combination of self- and externally-determined motivations are likely more suitable. Confirmatory factor analyses will be carried out to further refine the items associated with each dimension ahead of the conference.