“Framing” health related messages either by focusing on the loss of not engaging in a specific behaviour or by focusing on the gain by engaging into a desired behaviour can have a massive outcome on how people perceive a given message - and more importantly how likely they are to actually act. This effect can be astonishingly large: For example, Mann, Sherman & Updegraff showed that by matching the frame of the message to the motivations of the recipient, the communications were up to 50% more effective in changing behavior - impressive to say the least!
In a new, exploratory research project which we are about to start at Middlesex University, we will go a little further and explore the link between culture and message framing - an area which has not been explored a lot as yet. Starting next week, we will start an initial survey comparing individualistic and collectivistic countries and a number of differently framed messages and appeals - thus linking current advertising research and cross-cultural research with health message framing research. Very exciting! Stay tuned for the findings 
!
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This sounds really interesting. But I have a question: The Mann et al study showed the effectiveness of matching the frame of the message to individual motivations. But will this translate easily into a cultural context? Are cultures homogeneous enough these days to allow such an analysis? I’d be interested to see how you approach this!
Your point is a good one - actually I more or less simply tried to say how large the effect of framing could be (rather than talk about the link between motivation and [cultural] values etc…). A lot has been written on how optimising values along cultural lines leads to better consumer response from commercial marketing research ( see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=658221&rec=1&srcabs=499104 ) - but not so much about the validity in social marketing coms. But of course, cultures (or more to the point the people that make up a culture) are never homogenous - and in an ideal world, one could check the individual values and then optimise coms accordingly…
Hi, I am looking for a paper that summarizes previous findings on message framing (regradless of culture). Do you know such a paper?
Thank you
Thanks Julia for your question! Unfortunately I’m not aware of a single paper summarising concisely all aspects of message framing. Actually, I’m sure there would be much too much to discuss to attempt this. In the various Social Marketing books (including in ours) there are brief summaries if you would like to get started. Two other papers I’d recommend are The cultural congruency effect: Culture, regulatory focus, and the effectiveness of gain-vs. loss-framed health messages and Fear appeals in social marketing: Strategic and ethical reasons for concern.