Few women regularly perform breast self-examinations (BSE) despite attempts by the American Cancer Society to encourage this activity.

The present study suggested that in order to understand the relationship between persuasive messages and BSE attitudes message-type, attitude-type and personality-type need to be considered.

It was hypothesized that women classified as sensitizers would agree more with messages that matched the way in which they were thinking about BSE, i.e., an emotional message to an affectively focused person or an informational message to a cognitively focused person.

Alternatively, women classified as repressors would agree more with messages that did not match the way in which they were thinking about BSE, i.e., an emotional message of a cognitively focused person or an informational message to an affectively focused person.