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An experimental study exposed participants ( N = 299) to different message frames to investigate whether Family Communication Patterns (FCP) and message characteristics influenced willingness to communicate about Family Health History (FHH). Message frames were either collective (our), individual (mine), or control (no pronouns). Afterward, participants were asked about their perceived collective psychological ownership of health information, attitudes, subjective norms, and FHH communication intentions. Although the message frames had no impact on perceived collective psychological ownership of health information, conversation orientation and conformity orientation (respecting parental authority) were positively associated with perceived collective psychological ownership of health information. Additionally, perceived collective psychological ownership, attitudes, and subjective norms were found to have indirect effects between FCP and FHH communication intentions. These findings provide further support that FCP influences how health message appeals are processed and suggest interventions could be tailored to FCP orientations for effective FHH behaviors.

The current study extends family communication patterns (FCP) research to assess how family communication schemata (conversation and conformity orientation dimensions) influence systematic processing of health appeals intended to persuade individuals to seek family health history information, emphasizing an updated conceptualization of family conformity (i.e., the expanded conformity orientation scale). Our results suggest that conversation orientation and the conformity dimension of parental control are the primary drivers of systematic processing of family health history messages. Systematic processing, in turn, was significantly associated with more positive attitudes and greater intentions to seek health information from family members. Our results suggest family communication patterns may impact individual engagement with family health history campaign messages, thus campaign designers may want to consider how best to tailor messages to match family communication characteristics.