Promoting Continued Exercise with Visual Gain Framing: A Replicable Positive-Emotion Pathway and the Conditional Role of Self-Perceived Attractiveness

As public health campaigns increasingly rely on imagery, including AI-generated visuals, this research examines how image-based gain- versus loss-framed exercise messages shape continuing (rather than general) exercise intentions. Across three experiments using varied visual formats, gain-framed posters consistently increased continuing exercise intention relative to a no-message control; loss-framed posters did not. Parallel mediation analyses revealed a robust and replicable asymmetric pathway in which positive emotion mediated the effect of gain framing on continuing exercise intention, whereas negative emotion did not. We further examined self-perceived attractiveness, a theoretically relevant moderator given appearance-based exercise motives. Although lower attractiveness enhanced gain-framing effects in one study, this moderation did not replicate consistently across studies. Together, the findings indicate that (a) visual gain framing reliably promotes continued exercise, (b) does so through positive emotion, and (c) offers limited benefit from tailoring messages to self-perceived attractiveness.