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Abstract Self-affirmation has been validated as an effective way to dampen the defensiveness of message recipients when facing the health-risk information designed to evoke fear to cease unhealthy behaviors. However, it has been unclear in current literature that whether self-affirmation is potential to introduce overreaction. With experiments and region-of-significance test method, the current study discovered that:① Self-affirmation exerted a stronger persuading effect in health-risk communication along with the increase in defensiveness. ②In those message recipients with low relevance, self-affirmation enhanced the persuasiveness of health-risk message when defensive reaction was high. In the meantime, it reduced the overreaction such as unnecessary fear. ③ In contrast, in those message recipients with high relevance, self-affirmation effect was either insignificant or even strengthened defensive reaction and decreased message persuasiveness when defensiveness was high. The present study discussed in details the boundary conditions of self-affirmation effect across distinct defensiveness and relevance. And this study contributes to the self-affirmation and health-risk communication theories. In practice, the current study sheds lights on the suitable group for self-affirmation tactic.
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Received: 21 July 2016
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2017, Vol. 14 
