What Are Persuasive Messages?
Let’s continue our discussion of the difficult problem of modifying cigarette smoking behavior by examining an approach used to prevent smoking during adolescence, a time when most smoking is initiated. To access young people through attractive and often-used communication channels, a television and radio campaign was developed to prevent smoking. Messages were designed according to a social influence model (1) to address four persuasive objectives that had been shown in previous research to encourage young people not to start smoking. These objectives for the young target audiences were to perceive fewer advantages to smoking, to perceive more disadvantages to smoking, to acquire social skills to resist peer pressures to smoke, and to perceive that most people their age do not smoke. After 4 years of intervention, students in communities receiving these messages in the media and in school were 35% to 40% less likely to be weekly smokers than those receiving the messages in school alon
