Date of Award
2024
Degree Type
Open Access Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Psychology, MA
Program
School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Jason T. Siegel
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
P. Wesley Schultz
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2024 Christopher M Falco
Keywords
depression, help-seeking, social norms, social norms approach
Subject Categories
Psychology
Abstract
The current research examined whether making static and trending norms salient through persuasive messaging could increase help-seeking inclinations (i.e., attitudes, expectations, and intentions) among people with depression. Study 1 indicated that people with depressive symptomatology significantly underestimated the number of people who seek help for depression. Although approximately 66% of U.S. adults with depression met with professionals for help in 2020, on average, participants believed this rate was 35%. Most associations between norm perceptions and help-seeking inclinations were nonsignificant (e.g., perceived static norms were not significantly associated with help-seeking attitudes or outcome expectations; trending norm perceptions did not significantly relate to help-seeking outcome expectations, attitudes, or intentions, nor did depressive symptomatology) or weak (e.g., there was a significant association between a perceived past static norm and help-seeking intentions, r = .12). In Study 2, participants with heightened depressive symptomatology were exposed to one of three messages: a static norm message, a trending norm message, or a comparison message containing no information about norms. Even though the static and trending norms message resulted in significantly greater perceptions of help-seeking prevalence, they did not directly affect help-seeking attitudes, outcome expectations, or intentions. However, relative to the comparison message, the static and trending norm messages had small indirect effects on help-seeking intentions through increased norm perceptions. Results underscore the challenge of persuading people with depression to seek help and indicate that a campaign focusing primarily on reporting descriptive norms of help-seeking may not be the most effective way to increase help-seeking among people with depression.
ISBN
9798342762748
Recommended Citation
Falco, Christopher. (2024). Increasing Help-Seeking Among People with Depression: An Empirical Assessment of a Static and Trending Norms Approach. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 860. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/860.
