The role of sympathy in motivating behaviour change: a discrete emotions approach to examining responses to cancer warning labels for alcohol

This study investigated how fear, disgust, anger, and sympathy relate to the effectiveness of pictorial warning labels (PWLs) designed to communicate alcohol-related cancer risks. We recruited two samples: (1) an online panel of moderate and heavy drinkers (aged 21-84), and (2) college student drinkers (aged 18-28). Participants were randomly assigned to view either three narrative PWLs depicting lived experiences or three non-narrative PWLs showing diseased organs. Across both samples, narrative PWLs elicited lower levels of anger and disgust and higher levels of sympathy than non-narrative PWLs. Narrative PWLs also generated less fear than non-narrative PWLs among the online panel participants, but not among college student drinkers. Moreover, in the online panel sample, narrative PWLs decreased intentions to reduce and stop drinking due to lower fear, but simultaneously increased intentions to reduce drinking due to a decrease in anger and an increase in sympathy. Among college students, narrative PWLs promoted intentions to reduce and stop drinking only through greater sympathy. These findings highlight sympathy as a key emotional pathway for promoting behavioural change. In designing cancer warning labels for alcohol, communicators should consider avoiding appeals that provoke disgust or anger and instead use narrative approaches to evoke sympathetic responses in consumers.