Promotion of dental care using visual perspectives in mental imagery: A cultural approach

In all studies, participants completed a face measure (Zane & Yeh, 2002) first, then imagined engaging in a future dental health behaviour using a 1st-person or a 3rd-person perspective (following Libby et al., 2007) and answered questions about the visualized action. Participants were recruited using the departmental participant pool or via advertisements on campus. In all studies, outcome variables were analysed as a function of visual perspective and level of endorsed face (and cultural background in Study 1).

Study 1 (n=180): Participants were instructed to picture themselves purchasing mouthwash, a behaviour that is likely to take place in public. They then reported on their intentions to purchase mouthwash and were given a £5 voucher allowing them to purchase self-care products at the campus shop where the type of product purchased (mouthwash or other products) using the voucher was noted.

Study 2 (n=125): Replicating the procedure in Study 1, this study examined a dental behaviour typically exercised in private: flossing. To examine behavioural outcomes (in addition to intentions), participants were handed 7 individually wrapped flosses to use within the coming week and asked to report how many they actually used at the end of the week.

Study 3 (n=209): This study also focused on flossing, this time highlighting the public (e.g., having bad breath) versus private (e.g., getting cavities) consequences of not flossing using a health message prior to the visualization task. It was conducted online and attitudes and intentions were assessed.

Study 4 (n=71): This study explored whether the 3rd- person perspective effects are due to seeing oneself from the perspective of the generalized other by exposing participants to schematic faces with a goal to unobtrusively induce feelings of public scrutiny. Participants were invited to participate in a study on product evaluation. The task consisted of trying three different kinds of mouthwash, one with no label, the other two labelled in such a way to highlight social (preventing bad breath) or private (preventing cavities) consequences of using mouthwash. Participants tried the no label mouthwash first, followed by the other two (counterbalanced). This task took place with a poster present or not (Kitayama, et al. 2004). Participants competed an evaluation form after trying each mouthwash, which included measures on attitudes and intentions concerning purchasing that mouthwash.

Study 5 (n=111): This study was conducted to examine the reasons underlying the stronger impact of the 3rd-person perspective on those endorsing high levels of face for public behaviours and 1st-person perspective for private behaviours. In a between-subjects design, participants imagined purchasing mouthwash (public) and flossing (private) dental health behaviour and reported which perspective they took during visualization. They also reported how vivid, realistic, and easy it was to imagine these behaviours, and described in an open-ended fashion what they imagined. Descriptions were coded for abstractness and concreteness.

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