Monique Mitchell Turner
Chair of the Department of Communication | Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES
Monique Mitchell Turner is trained in persuasion and employs that expertise in health and risk communication.
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Biography
Dr. Monique Mitchell Turner is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. Prior to this appointment, she served as Associate Dean of MPH programs at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University. Turner is trained in persuasion and employs that expertise in health and risk communication; with a particular focus on message design and evaluation, risk perception, and cognitive processing of health risk communication (including risk judgment and decision making). Turner’s main focus is on the role that emotions play in the underlying psychosocial processes explaining message effects; her work has examined the effects of guilt, shame, anger, and fear (etc) in the cognitive impacts of public health messaging. Turner is the author of the Anger Activism model—a behavioral theory explaining when anger is constructive versus deleterious. As the former director of the Center for Risk Communication Research at the University of Maryland, Turner’s research has been funded by organizations such as Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN), and the Centers for Disease Control. Turner is the former Senior Editor of Health Communication and is the former associate editor of Communication Research Reports. She is the past chairperson of both the Communication and Social Cognition Division of the National Communication Association and the Health Communication Division of the International Communication Association.
Turner oversees the Department of Communication at MSU. Previously, she oversaw the MPH program at GW as well as the online MPH at GW. She is the former director of both the DrPH and the PhD Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at GW.
The focus of Turner’s research is on the role of emotion in message design and message processing. Recently, her work has been examining the intersections of discrete emotions in information seeking, attention and processing (via eye-tracking), bio-physiological responses, and social norms. Graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to contact her about research opportunities.
Industry Expertise (3)
Public Relations and Communications
Education/Learning
Research
Areas of Expertise (6)
Risk Perception
Persuasion
Cognitive Processing
Social Influence
Emotion
Health Communications
Accomplishments (3)
Excellence in Doctoral Mentorship (professional)
2018 GWSPH
Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award (professional)
2016 GWSPH
Ambassador Scholar at the Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival (professional)
2010 National Communication Association
Education (3)
Michigan State University: Ph.D., Communication 1999
Michigan State University: M.A., Communication 1996
Michigan State University: B.A., English Literature 1994
Affiliations (5)
- International Communication Association (ICA)
- National Communication Association (NCA)
- American Public Health Association (APHA)
- The Obesity Society (TOS)
- Society for Behavioral Medicine (SBM)
Links (5)
News (2)
Turner and Vos named International Communication Association Fellows
MSU Today online
2023-06-09
Two faculty in Michigan State University's College of Communication Arts and Sciences were named Fellows of the International Communication Association, one of the top honors in the field of communication. Monique Mitchell Turner and Tim P. Vos accepted the honor during the 73rd Annual ICA Conference, May 25 - 29.
Designing effective health risk messages for COVID-19 for MSU students
WKAR Public Media online
2020-07-15
It's always my pleasure to welcome Dennis Martell to the MSU Today microphones. Dennis is executive director of the National Social Norms Center and is in the Health Promotion Department at MSU. And it's great to welcome Monique Mitchell Turner to MSU Today for the first time. Dr. Turner is professor and chair of MSU's renowned Department of Communication.
Event Appearances (3)
Longitudinal Effects of Cigarette Pictorial Warning Labels Among Young Adults
2021 Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Annual Meeting Virtual
Men standing up to men: The effect of social norms on bystander intervention to reduce verbal sexual harassment
71st International Communication Association Conference Denver, CO
Does anger predict activism against antivaxxers? Using the anger activism model as an audience segmentation tool
106th National Communication Association Conference Indianapolis, IN
Research Grants (3)
OncoEngage: A Novel System to Improve Cancer Clinical Trial Recruitment and Retention
National Institutes for Health (SBIR) $350,000
Principal Investigator of MSU sub-contract
MI COVID Alert
Michigan Department of Health and Human Service $200,000
October 2020-December 2020
RAPID: The impact of norms and emotions on social distancing during COVID-19
National Science Foundation $200,000
July 2020-June 2021
Journal Articles (5)
The effects of moral norms and anticipated guilt on COVID19 prevention behaviors
Current Psychology2023 Studies have shown that older adolescents have a low perceived personal risk of COVID-19, and yet their ability and willingness to engage in COVID-19 prevention behaviors is imperative for community health. Thus, health communication scholars need to consider alternative psycho-social predictors of prevention behaviors that will assist in protecting others in a pandemic.
The madness of misperceptions: evaluating the ways anger contributes to misinformed beliefs
Journal Of Communication2023 Drawing from established theoretical traditions in cognitive consistency, motivated reasoning, heuristic–systematic processing, and the anger-activism model, we extend existing work linking anger with misperceptions by specifying three distinct ways anger might contribute to the formation of misperceptions: Increasing reliance on partisan heuristics, influencing political information-seeking behavior, and moderating the influence of partisan media exposure.
Predicting Breastfeeding Intentions: A Test and Extension of the Theory of Normative Social Behavior with African American Social Identity
Health Communication2023 Breastfeeding is a health promoting social behavior but statistics suggest a persistent disparity of lower rates among African American mothers. The Theory of Normative Social Behavior (TNSB) explains when and how norms influence behaviors, but has produced inconsistent results with respect to proposed moderators group identity and injunctive norms (IN), limiting its predictive value in diverse cultural groups.
Improving African American women's engagement in clinical research: A systematic review of barriers to participation in clinical trials
Journal of the National Medical Association2022 Despite multiple efforts, African American women continue to be inadequately represented in clinical research while being overrepresented in disease, producing research results with limited generalizability to this specific population.
Longitudinal effects of cigarette pictorial warning labels among young adults
Journal of Behavioral Medicine2021 Young adults are influenced by cigarette package marketing. Pictorial warning labels are a recommended intervention. Evidence demonstrates pictorial warnings impact negative emotion, risk perceptions, and motivation to quit smoking, but there is limited research on their effects over time. This study analyzes data from a randomized trial of young adult smokers (N = 229) exposed to a pictorial or text-only cigarette warning.
