Recently, the television channel Star Movies Select HD resorted to a unique way of deterring viewers from smoking. Whenever the actors engaged in smoking, a message popped up below as always; however, it was not the conventional ‘Smoking kills’ message. Instead, it roughly read ‘More than 80 lac people die from tobacco use every year.’ Does disclosing a fear-inducing fact promise to alter the attitude or behaviour of viewers towards smoking? How might a huge number as ‘80 lac’ perform any better than the generic ‘smoking kills’ message in discouraging movie-watchers from smoking? This article seeks to break down this message into smaller components and examine each one closely through the perspective of behavioural science.
When it comes to persuasive messaging, it is worth looking at one of the most successful experiments conducted to enhance tax compliance in the United Kingdom. Michael Hallsworth, along with a team of fellow professors, the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) employed creatively-framed messages to get people to pay taxes on time: they sent out five messages amongst 1,00,000 taxpayers, a couple of which are “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their tax on time,” “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their tax on time. You are currently in the very small minority of people who have not paid us yet.” The former is based on a country norm with emphasis placed on ‘the UK’ and the latter is based on the minority norm. The results revealed that treatment groups exposed to country and minority norm messaging exhibited treatment effects of 2.1% (a £980,000 increase in total taxes paid within 23 days) and 5.1% (a £2.367 million increase in taxes paid within 23 days), respectively.
Another experiment concerned a hotel in the US informing its guests that “75% of the hotel guests reused their towels”. This single statement induced people to reuse their towels too. Such descriptive norms can be used to emphasise vital facts and reframe situations in a way that induces behaviour change.
‘Die’
Let us now examine the word ‘die’ in the abovementioned message and understand why the channel chose to employ a negative connotation instead of using phrases like ‘...lac people are affected by tobacco…’ or ‘...lac people suffer huge medical bills due to tobacco use…’. One answer might be the concept of ‘framing.’ Framing is a potent tool for influencing behaviour by presenting information in a certain manner and this fact was established by Kahneman and Tversky using the Asian Disease Problem. Now let us turn to an instance of successful replication of the framing effect. Beth E. Meyerowitz and Shelly Chaiken addressed the issue of extremely low rates of breast self-examination (BSE) among American women despite their high susceptibility to breast cancer. They distributed pamphlets to college-aged women emphasising the significance of BSE and how to perform it. Additionally, the pamphlets also consisted of persuasive text in gain and loss language one of which was ‘Research shows that women who do [not do] BSE have (an increased) [a decreased] chance of finding a tumor in the early, more
treatable stage of the disease.’ The phrases in the square parentheses indicate the loss language. The results were more than convincing since the women who read the pamphlet containing the loss language displayed more positive attitudes and behaviours towards undertaking BSE compared to those who read pamphlets having gain-oriented language.
Using the word ‘die’ in place of more subtle alternatives plays with people’s fear, sometimes to extreme levels. There is a formal term for it: death anxiety (thanatophobia). This phenomenon refers to people’s apprehension as they become aware of death and do not even think about the word ‘death.’ People with this fear might often picture themselves dying or worry about what their family or friends would do as they leave them behind. Therefore, the smoking advisory in question wishes to create an impact on its viewers, especially the ones displaying mild symptoms of death anxiety by directly targeting people’s consternation surrounding the uncertainty of death.
‘80 Lac’
Now let’s look at the great number ‘80 lac’. Thaler and Sunstein illustrate how negative framing plays with people’s decisions in their pathbreaking Nudge: if one is suffering from heart disease and the doctor proposes a surgery that has the following track record - ‘of 100 patients who have this operation, 10 are dead after five years.’ This statement is different compared to saying that ‘of 100 patients who have this operation, 90 are alive after five years.’ The latter statement is positively framed and people might give a green light to the surgery as they tend to feel optimistic. On the contrary, the former statement might make people pessimistic about their chances of survival. They begin to think that there are realistic chances of them being one of the 10 people who die post-surgery. The framing effect thus shows that how information is presented can influence choice, despite the information being the same.
The number ‘80 lac’ induces humans into thinking that ‘80 lac is a huge number of deaths per year, and I might be one of them.’ So, by placing themselves in the hot seat and seriously considering the possibility of being one of the 80 lac people that die due to tobacco smoking every year, they may change their attitude, if not their smoking behaviour.
The Power of Information
Some readers might not be convinced with the reasoning given for ‘80 lac’ because not everyone would pay attention and take that figure seriously enough to alter their attitudes towards smoking. However, one must account for heterogeneous responses within a population. The smoking warning may not impact a large population of viewers in the same magnitude but, it might be effective if, within this large population, a significant number of people have problems quitting smoking or are chain smokers.
Providing information has always been a prominent nudge and has been moderately successful. In India, informing people about the average electricity consumption of their neighbours helped reduce mean electricity consumption by 8% during the summer. Next, researchers at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) carried out a multi-year study using a message which contained aspects of information (the daily water usage for each family), feedback (a goal regarding water consumption and the corresponding feedback) and easy-to-follow images to conserve water. The intervention was a resounding success since household water consumption fell by 15-25% over the next two years after the intervention was stopped. Therefore, simply giving people an insight into what others do and highlighting some relevant facts can encourage attitudinal and behavioural change.
Will the Statement Create an Impact?
While the TV channel’s approach seems theoretically sound and aligns with basic principles of behavioural science, the question holds: will it work? One possible reason why it might not work is because the advisory might not be intrusive enough to be noticed by watchers. Secondly, it might also be the case that a viewer’s attention is already divided between the movie, the message, and various other activities, resulting in them missing the message altogether.
What about the video messages that play in between the movies? These videos are often gruesome and show people infected with diseases like mouth and lung cancer along with a video discouraging people from smoking in public spaces. From common observation (and my behaviour), people generally turn away from the screen, shut their eyes or change the channel when these videos play. However, there is literature that shows otherwise. An experiment in the United States involving ninth graders found that playing a short anti-smoking advertisement did change students’ views on smoking and they began to perceive smoking as unattractive when actors smoked in the film. Next, in another study with 84 smokers, viewing anti-smoking advertisements resulted in the smokers displaying significantly lower smoking intensity. Therefore, more research and experimentation must be undertaken in India to assess the effectiveness of existing smoking advisories and modify them if need be. While the literature in India is sparse to comment on this issue, there have been studies conducted elsewhere in the world that measure the feasibility of different interventions involving behaviour change techniques (BCT) concerning smoking activity.
It is necessary to ensure that the nudge’s effects do not wear off quickly. To do so, the interventions and messages must be salient. All TV channels can use framing and create persuasive messages to replace the typical ‘Smoking kills’ warning. Additionally, eye-opening statistics from credible sources like the World Health Organisation (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) can be cited to draw people’s attention. Additionally, studies showing statistical projections like ‘one cigarette reduces your lifespan by 11 minutes’ and ‘chain smokers risk reducing their lifespan by 13 years on average’ can be utilised to put things into perspective and communicate the high cost of smoking in a manner that viewers can easily comprehend.
Changing attitudes and behaviour is not easy, especially when the population is large and no two humans are the same. However, the impact of the message adopted by this TV channel remains to be seen in the months to come.
Akshaya Balaji
