Gender moderation of effects of visual framing of Covid-19 messages on negative emotions

Abstract

A recent meta-analysis revealed that not only gain-framed persuasion messages induce positive emotions in the audience whereas loss frames induce negative emotions, but also positive emotions enhance the influence of gain frames whereas negative emotions augment the effects of loss frames; emotions appeared to mediate effects of framed messages on the public’s compliance with a recommendation. Since it is known that women experience more negative emotions than men, we evaluated in the present study gender biases in negative emotions induced by images accompanying texts with nutritional advice to prevent severity of COVID-19 symptoms. The texts were non-loss framed. Using photos of a coffin versus a family, we found a robust image x gender interaction amongst hospital personnel in Lima, Peru: whereas the coffin tended to increase the negative emotions of women, those of men presented an opposite tendency. We conclude that the intervention of emotions in the persuasion process implies that different adherences of men and women to the same message are likely and this should be studied. Researchers who ignore gender in visual framing studies may attain distorted conclusions.