Coping and Construal Level Matching Drives Health Message Effectiveness via Response Efficacy or Self-Efficacy Enhancement

Five experiments examine the nature of different coping strategies and their subsequent effects on the effectiveness of health messages. We theorize that the two strategies of problem-focused versus emotion-focused coping are systematically associated with distinct construal levels (lower vs. higher), and thus messages cast at different levels of construal are differentially effective when a particular coping strategy is being activated....