As society ages, it’s vital that older adults are able to absorb the latest health information to ensure that they age as healthily as possible.  A recent study from North Carolina State University finds that how we frame information is vital to the absorption of it.

“There’s a lot of research showing that older adults prefer positive information, often avoiding or ignoring negative information,” the authors explain. “That can have consequences for older adults, particularly when it comes to information regarding their health. We wanted to see if there was a way to overcome this positivity bias when it comes to health news.”

The researchers analyzed nearly 200 adults aged between 65 and 80, with around 25% of them shown images to provoke a negative mood, another 25% shown images to provoke a positive mood.  Another 25% were then shown a health checklist that was designed to make them feel badly about their current health and lifestyle, whilst the final 25% were shown a checklist that was designed to make them feel good about them.

Framing information

Each volunteer was then shown headlines from six articles about health, half of which had negative headlines but with valuable information contained within the article, whilst the other half had a positive headline but with less valuable information in the article.  Each volunteer was asked to pick three to read.

The data revealed that the volunteers who were in the positive checklist group were 50% more likely to read the article with the negative headline and the valuable information than their peers who were in the negative checklist group.

“Specifically, study participants who completed the checklist giving them a positive attitude toward their health chose to read, on average, about 60 percent of the negative articles, whereas participants who completed the negative checklist chose only 37 percent of the negative articles,” the authors explain. “There was no effect for participants who did not complete the health checklist and whose moods were only influenced by images. We also ran the same study with a group of 201 younger adults, and there was no effect with any of the groups there. This tells us that having a positive attitude toward health may primarily affect the willingness of older adults to engage with negative health news.”

Motivations for change

The researchers also examined the motivations behind each volunteer seeking health-related information.  It transpired that those with a more positive attitude towards their own health were much more likely to actively seek out health-related content.

This was confirmed in a follow-up experiment whereby volunteers were asked to focus purely on the health checklists.  The subsequent articles were then split into four types: positive and informative; negative and informative; positive and not informative; and negative and not informative.

“In this second study, we found participants who completed the positive checklist were over 30 percent more likely to select articles with negative headlines to read – but only if the headlines were also informative,” the authors explain. “Specifically, the group with positive attitudes toward their health again chose to read about 60 percent of the negative/informative articles, while the group with negative attitudes toward their health chose only about 40 percent of the negative/informative articles.”

The researchers believe that their findings can play a crucial role in getting older adults to absorb vital health-related information.