Using Health Conditions for Laughs and Health Policy Support: The Case of Food Allergies.

Health conditions are sometimes included in entertainment media comedies as a context for and as a source of humor. Food allergies are a typical case in point: They are potentially life-threatening yet may be used in humorous contexts. We conducted a content analysis of food allergies in entertainment media and tested the effects of humorous portrayals from an exemplar entertainment program. The content analysis confirmed that when food allergies were portrayed in television and the movies, it was most frequently in a humorous context and often contained inaccurate information. A follow-up experiment showed viewing a humorous portrayal of food allergies had an indirect negative effect on related health policy support via decreased perceived seriousness of food allergies. Inclusion of an educational video eliminated this effect on reduced policy support, with cognitive dissonance as a mediator. Findings support the hypothesis that portraying a health condition in a humorous context may reduce perceptions of seriousness and willingness to support public health policies to address risks associated with the condition, supporting and extending prior research findings.

More Than Numbers: Effects of Social Media Virality Metrics on Intention to Help Unknown Others in the Context of Bone Marrow Donation.

A bone marrow transplant is often the only key to recovery and survival for patients suffering from blood cancers. Social media platforms have allowed nonprofit organizations as well as family members and friends of patients in need of a matching donor to make their solicitation messages go viral and reach out to the broadest possible audience to increase the likelihood of finding a matching donor. Noting that social media audiences are exposed not only to the content of a social media message but also to the metrics representing the virality of the message (i.e., how many times the content has been shared), we conducted an online experiment to investigate the effects of virality metrics on perceived social norms and behavioral intention to join a bone marrow registry. In doing so, we considered the potential moderating role of perceived threat posed by blood cancers. The experiment was conducted with 152 participants who met the general eligibility guidelines set by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). The results of the experiment showed that exposure to high virality metrics led to greater perceived injunctive norms. The results also revealed that the effect of virality metrics on perceived injunctive norms was significant among those perceiving low levels of blood cancer threat. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that high virality metrics led to greater intention to join a bone marrow registry through perceived injunctive norms only when perceived threat of blood cancers was low. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.