Persuasive Message Pretesting Using Non-Behavioral Outcomes: Differences in Attitudinal and Intention Effects as Diagnostic of Differences in Behavioral Effects

Persuasive message designers would like to be able to pretest messages to see which will be more effective in influencing behavioral outcomes, but pretesting using behavioral measures is commonly not practical. Examination of within-study effect size comparisons from 317 studies of 22 message variations suggests that persuasive messages’ relative effectiveness is strikingly similar across attitudinal, intention, and behavioral outcomes—with...