The route to improve the effectiveness of negative PSAs
研究了在负面框架公益广告中加入情绪提升或自我肯定元素，能增强信息接受度，尤其对当前有不良行为的受众更有效。
To encourage people to behave in a more socially responsible or healthy way, many public service announcements (PSAs) dramatically illustrate the dire consequences of undesirable social or health behaviors. However, although informative, such negatively-framed PSAs can generate unintended consequences (e.g., a bad mood, low message acceptance). In this research, we investigated two approaches to improve the effectiveness of negatively-framed PSAs: (1) mood elevation and (2) self-affirmation. Using three studies with large samples of consumers, we found that adding mood-elevating or self-affirming elements to a negative PSA can be an effective way to enhance message acceptance. This is especially the case for recipients currently engaging (vs. not engaging) in the undesirable behaviors. Additionally, we designed mood elevation methods that can be implemented in PSAs in practice.