Fluency & Over The Counter Drug Warning Labels

Fluency is defined as the ease with which something is processed (Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Okuhara, 2017). Recent research has shown that the fluency of a drug’s name can have an effect on people’s perceptions and evaluation judgments (Dohle & Siegrist, 2013, Dohle & Montoya, 2017). Research has also shown that the fluency of information can have an effect on people’s memory and performance (Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughan, 2011). The purpose of this study was to see how manipulating the fluency of warning labels could affect people’s perceptions, adherence, memory, and behaviors. Results showed that labels with fluent formats improved purchasing preferences and memory; labels with fluent colors were also shown to improve purchasing preferences. However, neither the fluency of the format nor color affected participant’s judgments of adherence or perceived hazardousness. The results are of particular importance because a product’s label is the key source of safety information for the consumer (Goyal et al., 2012)