Communicators frequently make adjustments to accommodate receivers’ characteristics. One strategy for accommodation is to enhance the relevance of communication for receivers. The current work uses information targeting—a communication strategy where information is disseminated to audiences believed to experience heightened risk for a health condition—to test whether and why targeting health information based on marginalized racial identities backfires. Online experimental findings from Black and White adults recruited via MTurk (Study 1) and Prolific Academic (Study 2) showed that Black Americans who received targeted (vs. nontargeted) health messages about HIV or flu reported decreased attention to the message and reduced trust in the message provider. White Americans did not differentially respond to targeting. Findings also demonstrated that (a) these negative consequences emerged for Black Americans due to social identity threat, and (b) these consequences predicted downstream cognitive and behavioral responses. Study 2 showed that these consequences replicated when the targeting manipulation signaled relevance directly via marginalized racial identities. Collectively, findings demonstrate that race-based targeting may lead to overaccommodation, thus precluding the expected benefits of relevance.

中文翻译：

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太接近而不舒服：通过有针对性的健康信息利用基于身份的相关性对美国黑人来说适得其反

传播者经常进行调整以适应接收者的特征。一种适应策略是增强接收者通信的相关性。目前的工作使用信息定位（一种传播策略，将信息传播给据信面临较高健康状况风险的受众）来测试基于边缘化种族身份的定位健康信息是否以及为何适得其反。通过 MTurk（研究 1）和 Prolific Academy（研究 2）招募的黑人和白人成年人的在线实验结果表明，收到有关艾滋病毒或流感的有针对性（与非有针对性）健康信息的美国黑人报告称，对该信息的关注度下降，信任度也降低。消息提供者。美国白人对针对目标的反应没有差异。调查结果还表明，(a) 由于社会身份威胁，美国黑人出现了这些负面后果，(b) 这些后果预测了下游的认知和行为反应。研究 2 表明，当目标操纵直接通过边缘化种族身份发出相关性信号时，这些后果就会重复出现。总的来说，研究结果表明，基于种族的目标可能会导致过度适应，从而排除了相关性的预期好处。