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Biomedical subjects

Laura A Brannon

Publications and source records attributed to Laura A Brannon.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Increasing selective exposure to health messages by targeting person versus behavior schemas.

Schema correspondence theory (Brannon and Brock, 1994) was applied to the topic of selective exposure to health information. The following question was asked: When do people prefer to expose themselves to health-relevant information tailored to match their own needs and values (i.e., recipient self-schema matching) versus the values and goals that the healthy behavior brings to mind (i.e., behavior schema matching)? In general, recipient self-schema matched messages tended to be preferred over behavior schema matched messages. However, this tendency was attenuated to the extent that the behavior had a very well defined (prototypical) schema.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMed2006

Increasing family members' appreciation of family caregiving stress.

Participants read a message discussing the duties of a typical family caregiver (for example, a woman taking care of her elderly mother) and the associated psychological, physical, social, and financial stresses. The message was accompanied by an appeal that was either a control or was altruistic (other-oriented: focusing on the mother/caregiver's well-being) or egoistic (self-oriented: focusing on the child of the caregiver's needs and feelings). Participants who received an altruistic appeal were more appreciative of caregiving stresses than were those given an egoistic or a control appeal. Increasing family members' awareness of the stress involved in family caregiving is a first step in encouraging them to personally intervene on behalf of the caregiver.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Encouraging responsible drinking among underage drinkers.

Public Service Announcements tailored to specific college drinking rituals (Treise, Wolburg and Otnes 1999) were tested on 133 underage undergraduate drinkers. More significant reductions in drinking intentions were found when using appeals focusing on drinking rituals pertaining to Maturity/Order (older students drink moderately: "Don't drink like a freshman.") than to Transformation (desired personality and mood changes), Community (social bonding and camaraderie), or a no-message Control. Gender did not moderate this effect. Underage drinkers may drink, in part, to feel more "grown up." Emphasizing that more senior students actually drink responsibly may diminish this belief and result in reduced alcohol consumption among underage students.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Nursing expertise and information structure influence medical decision making.

This study examined the influence of nursing expertise and information structure on certainty of diagnostic decision making. Two hundred and sixteen nurse (experts), student nurse (novices), and non-nurse (naive) participants read patient scenarios either high in information structure (consistent diagnostic information) or low in information structure (inconsistent diagnostic information) and rated their certainty about what the potential diagnosis might be. Results indicated that participants with pre-existing cognitive schemata for processing patient information (experts and novices) were more certain about decision making with structured information than they were about unstructured information, but structure of information did not influence certainty ratings of naive participants.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

The representativeness heuristic: influence on nurses' decision making.

Nurses and student nurses read case descriptions and generated diagnoses for patients who differed on situational and behaviorial chactacteristics. Consistent with a representativeness heuristic, participants were less likely to attribute symptoms to physical illness when scenarios included extra-symptom patient characteristics. Results suggest that medical personnel implement prototypical, heuristic-based diagnostic procedures.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMed2002

Schema-derived persuasion and perception of AIDS risk.

Schema correspondence theory (Brannon & Brock, 1994) states that messages that reflect recipients' self-schemas will be more persuasive than non-matching messages. Two experiments demonstrated that matching public health messages to the self-schematic preferences of message recipients can increase the impact of AIDS prevention messages. Evidence from both experiments suggested that the matching effect was due to increased message processing of self-schema matching messages. In Study 1, the matching effect was greater for low need-for-cognition participants (indicating increased thinking in response to matching). In Study 2, participant listed significantly more thoughts in response to self-schema matching, as opposed to non-matching, messages.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗