09-02-2008, 06:41 PM
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Don't do what _those_ people do
from World Science;
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080825_outgroup
Quote:
A surprising new way to discourage risky behaviors?
Aug. 25, 2008
Courtesy University of Chicago Press Journals
and World Science staff
Ad campaigns aimed at reducing unhealthy behaviors like binge drinking often focus on the health risks.
But new research suggests a surprising new tactic exploiting social psychology might work better. The trick: link a risky behavior with some other group of people that the targeted audience wouldn’t want to be confused with.
Researchers have long cast about for new and better ways to reduce unhealthy behaviors like binge drinking. (Image: U.S. CDC)
Such a campaign, in other words, would “attend to how behaviors act as markers or signals of identity,” wrote the scientists, Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsylvania and Lindsay Rand of Stanford University in California, in the newly published findings.
The pair organized their own experimental publicity campaigns. These were aimed at college students—but with an eye toward another group whom these participants had nothing against, but wouldn’t want to be confused.
Groups of people seen as somehow separate by another are known as “outgroups” in social psychology jargon. The “ingroup” often sees outgroups as inferior, but not always.
Berger and Rand conducted two initial studies based on a presumption that college students would consider “graduate students” an outgroup.
In one study, college students were led to believe that graduate students consumed more junk food. Students exposed to this message chose 28 percent fewer junk-food items than participants who thought their group ate more junk food, the researchers reported.
In another study, researchers put fliers in freshman college dormitories. In one dorm, the fliers emphasized the health risks of binge drinking. In another dorm, the fliers linked binge drinking to graduate students. Participants in the dorm with the second flier drank at least 50 percent less alcohol than those who saw the health risk fliers, the investigators found.
In a third study, students on their way to a campus eatery were surveyed about perceptions of the media. One group read an article about politics and pop culture. A second group read an article associatin junk-food eating with online gamers. When research assistants watched the two groups ordering food, they found that the group who had read the article about online gamers made healthier choices.
“Decisions are not only based on risks and benefits, but also the identity that a given choice communicates to others,” Berger and Rand wrote. Thus “shifting perceptions of the identity associated with a risky behavior can help make better health a reality.” The findings are published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
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