Time and the misfits: Temporal framing and priming in persuasive communication

Abstract

Many of our daily choices and behaviors involve temporal dilemma between their short and long-term consequences. When promoting sustainable or healthy behaviors, great parts of the public propaganda are temporally framed by emphasizing the long-term benefits of short-term costly behaviors. Yet, previous studies highlighted how crucial is to take into consideration not only the temporal frame of the message, but also the persons’ time perspective, to assess the efficacy and the potential counter effects of temporally framed communications. This chapter reviews findings and issues related to temporal framing in persuasive communications, and highlights how time perspective is a crucial factor in making communications effective or not. We also present new findings suggesting that a solution could be to prime the context in which a message is delivered, in order to make this context congruent with the message frame or the individuals’ orientation, or both. From this contextual level of framing that may be helpful to avoid “negative nudge” effects in heath or environmental information campaigns, we suggest a few directions for future research.