Effective communication

From Spotify playlists to social media feeds, personalization is everywhere. Personalization also plays an important role in communication. This is not only about what information someone receives, but also about how that information is conveyed.

The same message can come across very differently depending on the words, tone, expressions, and even emojis used. In other words, it's not just about what we say, but also about how we say it.

Within the SocialMovez project, we investigated whether AI can adapt messages about health to the communication style of adolescents and whether this can make health communication more effective.

More relevant and personal

In a two-week study of 587 adolescents from the United Kingdom and Ireland, participants received daily text messages encouraging plant-based food choices. These messages were either linguistically personalized or non-personalized, or the participants received no messages at all.

We found that adolescents who received personalized health messages increasingly opted for a plant-based lunch over time. While linguistic personalization didn't lead to more behavioral change than standard messages, it did make the messages feel more relevant and personal. It also improved the sender's perception of the message.

Want to know more? Read the scientific article (preprint).