The strength of the arguments to the argumentative force of the message: theoretical considerations and presentation of applied research in public health

In this study, we hypothesise that the presence in an epidemiological information message of linguistic adverbial markers referring to the argumentative orientation will generate inferences centred on the communicative intention and that these will be matched with a lesser elaboration of its informative contents. In a text presented as a message information about the prevalence and incidence of a sexually transmitted infection, we vary the adverbial marking (low vs. high marking) and the knowledge of the disease (known vs. unknown disease). The results mainly show that the accentuation of the adverbial marking in the message increases the preventive intentions and (but) reduces the cognitive effort devoted to the informative contents. The question of the persuasiveness of preventive communications is approached in the conclusion of the study.