Avoiding Behavioral Resistance to Diet and Exercise Messages

People are exposed to many persuasive health messages that encourage them to become healthy in different ways. For instance, some messages encourage people to eat healthy and diet, and other messages encourage people to get active and exercise. How do consumers respond to the constant bombardment by these messages? Some consumers may respond by developing an automatic tendency to behave in line with the content of the persuasive health messages (Bargh and Chartrand 1999; 2000; Berger and Fitzsimons 2008; Fitzsimons, Chartrand, and Fitzsimons 2008). However, other consumers may respond by developing an automatic resistance to performing the promoted behavior, such that the original message has no effect on them at all (Laran, Dalton, and Andrade 2011). We propose that this automatic resistance happens for some people in response to direct health messages (e.g., diet-related words to promote healthier eating) and that this resistance can be avoided by using indirect health messages (e.g., exercise-related words to promote healthier eating).