When Needs Don’t Translate into Wants: Choosing the Right Tone to Communicate About Healthy Behaviors

Although individuals should benefit from adhering to communication that promotes healthier behaviors, such communication often encounters mixed success. To understand this incongruity, we identify a misconception about the roles of two distinct drivers of health behavior: needs (which are more objective) and wants (which are more subjective). While needs generally translate into wants in ordinary consumption contexts, they sometimes clash with wants in the context of health behaviors. We propose that communicators’ failure to anticipate this misalignment leads them to choose an inadequate communication tone (more or less assertive). Across three studies conducted in the field and online, adopting the perspectives of both communicators and receivers, we examine how the misalignment of needs and wants in health contexts affects the selection of communication tone and reactions to this communication. We find that communicators (and study participants taking the role of communicators) frequently select the tone (more or less assertive) of their communication based on the receivers’ (objective) needs. Still, conversely, receivers’ responses depend on how the tone of communication matches their (subjective) wants. This gap tends to disappear for more severe health issues, where wants align better with needs. The frequent misalignment of needs and wants in the health domain challenges health communication effectiveness. Communicators should seek ways to address this misalignment, for example, by increasing the perceived severity of the health issue or the perceived authority of the source.