Situated within the context of college students’ excessive drinking behaviors, the current study drew from dissonance theory, self-consistency theory, and hypocrisy induction methodology to evaluate the utility of the Communication Theory of Identity within persuasive health message design. Specifically, it examined whether hypocrisy induction manipulations that focused participants on salient identity layers made them mindful of corresponding identity gaps, which in turn caused them to experience cognitive dissonance that they sought to resolve by reporting intentions to change their excessive drinking behavior. Participants (N = 279) completed an online experiment in which they were randomly assigned either to one of four treatment conditions (i.e., traditional hypocrisy, personal-enacted identity gap hypocrisy, relational-enacted identity gap hypocrisy, communal-enacted identity gap hypocrisy) or one control condition. When compared to those in the control condition, participants in the personal-enacted and communal-enacted identity gap hypocrisy conditions reported significantly lower future intentions to engage in excessive drinking. There were no significant differences across conditions, however, in terms of identity gap magnitude or level of cognitive dissonance. These findings are noteworthy, considering that identity gap magnitude was significantly positively related to levels of cognitive dissonance and significantly negatively related to future intentions to engage in excessive drinking. Analyses also explored potential moderating variables in this process, finding that issue involvement moderated the relationship between level of cognitive dissonance and future intentions to engage in excessive drinking, such that intentions were lowest when cognitive dissonance was high and issue involvement was low. Finally, analyses indicated that there was a significant association between experimental condition and level of state reactance, such that participants in the personal-enacted identity gap hypocrisy condition experienced significantly lower levels of state reactance than participants in other conditions. Moreover, there was a significant positive relationship between identity gap magnitude and level of state reactance. The theoretical and contextual implications of these results are discussed. Namely, these results affirm that making message recipients mindful of identity gaps can be a viable persuasive health message design strategy; however, they also suggest that more research is needed to understand how best to make message recipients mindful of identity gaps and how best to integrate identity gaps into persuasive health messages.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:38:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rafaela Boiczuk de Toledo.pdf: 4600791 bytes, checksum: 2fbb2a93b296ec9dd1de177661c46d82 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-15 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The present study aimed to investigate the binge drinking and excessive drinking among a group of young college students, in order to comprehend which motivations, perceptions and fantasies are involved in the compulsive alcohol drinking. The binge drinking is a harmful alcohol consumption pattern very common among the university population, able to cause various harmful consequences. Population consisted of 21 college students, 11 women and 10 men, aged between 20 and 30 years old, from several graduation courses in the city of Curitiba and who had at least one episode of binge drinking in the last year. There were conducted interviews and applied three instruments on each participants (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, Social Adjustment Scale Factor / Neuroticism and projective technique of drawing with themed story). The material collected was analyzed qualitatively using Bardin s Content Analysis. Theoretically the analysis was based on the assumptions of Analytical Psychology. It was concluded that the excessive drinking and binge drinking are part of the studied sample s daily life indicating a trivialization of binge drinking among these young people, who are not able to symbolize their psychological suffering therefore they adopt a regressive and compulsive posture / O presente estudo teve por finalidade investigar o binge drinking e o consumo excessivo de bebida alcoólica em um grupo de jovens universitários, a fim de compreender quais são as motivações, percepções e fantasias envolvidas na ingestão compulsiva de álcool. O binge drinking é um padrão nocivo de consumo de bebida alcoólica muito comum entre a população universitária, capaz de acarretar diferentes consequências danosas. A população foi composta por 21 estudantes universitários, 11 mulheres e 10 homens, com idades entre 20 e 30 anos, de diversos cursos de graduação na cidade de Curitiba e que tiveram pelo menos um episódio de binge drinking no último ano. Foram realizadas entrevistas e aplicados três instrumentos a cada participante (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, Escala Fatorial de Ajustamento Social/Neuroticismo e a técnica projetiva de Desenho temático com história). O material coletado foi analisado qualitativamente por meio de categorias baseadas na Análise de Conteúdo segundo Bardin. Teoricamente a análise fundamentou-se nos pressupostos da Psicologia Analítica. Conclui-se que o consumo excessivo de bebida alcoólica e o binge drinking fazem parte do cotidiano da amostra estudada havendo uma banalização do abuso de bebida entre esses jovens, que não conseguem simbolizar o sofrimento psíquico e adotam atitudes regressivas e compulsivas