SynthesisFrontiers in psychology2021
Message Design Choices Don't Make Much Difference to Persuasiveness and Can't Be Counted On-Not Even When Moderating Conditions Are Specified.
Synthesis in Frontiers in psychology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Framing Effect of Digital Textual Messages on Uptake Rates of Medical Checkups: Field Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Trial
- Testing the effects of segmented crowdsource-selected messages to improve intentions to follow colorectal cancer screening recommendations: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.BMC public health · 2026Article
- (Mis)representing the Opposition and Rhetorical Success: Experimental Evidence on Faithful and Inaccurate Reformulations.Argumentation · 2026Article
- Strategies for Effective Public Health Communication in a Complex Information Environment.Annual review of public health · 2025Review
- Article
- How Do Physicians Frame Medical Information in Talks With Their Patients? An Inductive Microanalysis.Qualitative health research · 2024Article
- Hostility has a trivial effect on persuasiveness of rebutting science denialism on social media.Communications psychology · 2023Article
- Gain/loss framing moderates the VMPFC's response to persuasive messages when behaviors have personal outcomes.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
- A Story is Better Told With Collective Interests: An Experimental Examination of Misinformation Correction During the COVID-19 Pandemic.American journal of health promotion : AJHP · 2023Article
- Partisans' receptivity to persuasive messaging is undiminished by countervailing party leader cues.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Masculine men do not like feminine wording: The effectiveness of gendered wording in health promotion leaflets in the UK.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Persuaders face many message design choices: narrative or non-narrative format, gain-framed or loss-framed appeals, one-sided or two-sided messages, and so on. But a review of 1,149 studies of 30 such message variations reveals that, although there are statistically significant differences in persuasiveness between message forms, it doesn't make much difference to persuasiveness which option is chosen (as evidenced by small mean effect sizes, that is, small differences in persuasiveness: median mean
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.