How Personalized Prosocial Messages Can Promote Empathy, Attitude Change, and Helping Intentions Toward Stigmatized Social Groups

• In Event: The Study of Persuasion in Mass Communication

Abstract

This study examines the role of personalized prosocial messages in promoting empathy, attitude change, and helping intentions toward stigmatized social groups. Based on theories of destigmatization, empathy, and reactance, we predicted that higher levels of personal involvement elicited by a personalized prosocial media message would lead to higher levels of empathy and lower levels of reactance, both of which were assumed to mediate prosocial outcomes. An online experiment was conducted using a personalized and an non-personalized version of a viral advertisement for a campaign soliciting donations of winter coats for homeless people. As expected, structural equation modeling revealed a positive indirect effect of personal involvement on prosocial outcomes (attitudes and behavioral intentions toward homeless people, and willingness to support the campaign) that was mediated by empathy and reduced reactance. However, in addition to promoting personal involvement, personalization also lead to heightened reactance, which partly offset its positive effects.

Authors

• Andrea Kloss, LMU Munich

• Anne Bartsch, LMU Munich

• Sonja Donata Kretzschmar, U of the Federal German Army