Three reasons health messaging can fail

Image: Andres Siimon/Unsplash

Insightful new article here from Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law about three common mistakes in health messaging interventions. The three errors are:

1) Emphasizing the prevalence of an undesirable behavior.This establishes the undesirable behavior as a kind of social norm that is basically acceptable. From my own life, I read a story in the New York Times last year about how infrequently hotel guests tip housekeepers. I have found myself tipping less, it seems, after reading that article. I used to feel guilty about only leaving a dollar, but if most people don’t leave anything, then I don’t feel so guilty about leaving a paltry tip.

2) Emphasizing the large number of victims of said behavior. People respond to stories not statistics. Research demonstrates that people are moved to help identifiable individual victims because those stories elicit greater affective reactions. The authors posit that even graphic depictions of the outcomes of smoking may be less effective than an anecdotal story about how one person’s life has been affected.

3) Providing too many reasons for behavior change. Speakers tend to think that the more reasons they provide, the better. In reality, audiences essentially take all those reasons the speaker has provided and average them together. And if one of those many arguments is seen as weak, it undermines the perceived credibility of all the other arguments. Instead, focus on the strongest argument(s).