Examining recall of physical activity messages tailored to socioemotional goals among older adults

Laurence Bouchard, Lindsay R. Duncan

Despite well-established guidelines, most older adults do not engage in sufficient physical activity to achieve health benefits. Health messages tailored to socioemotional goals may help to promote physical activity in this population. The purpose of this study is to explore whether information presented in physical activity promotion messages tailored to older adults’ socioemotional goals is more easily recalled than information presented in non-tailored messages. In line with the socioemotional selectivity theory, we hypothesized that messages highlighting emotionally meaningful goals will be better recalled among a sample of older adults compared to non-emotional messages. Participants were older adults (N =20, M_age = 71.6 years, SD = 7.8 years), of varying physical activity levels. Participants looked at a series of 14 messages that highlighted emotional (n = 7 messages), and non-emotional (n = 7 messages) information related to engaging in physical activity. After viewing the messages, the participants underwent free-recall and prompted tests of their recollection of the message content via interview. We coded the interview transcripts for recall of emotional or non-emotional physical activity content and used chi-square tests to determine if recall is better for messages with more vs. less emotional content. Although time spent reading emotional vs non-emotional content was not significantly different (p > .05), recall for emotional content was significantly greater than for non-emotional content. More work is needed to assess if emotional messages could elicit improvements in physical activity attitudes, intentions, and behavior.