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The goal of the study seemed to be to better understand what creates the boomerang effect and how to avoid it. This is very similar to what I want to achieve in my comp, although the messages will be conveyed through print ads rather than a video or TV commercial.

The authors suggest that the boomerang effect may come from the interaction between the way a message is produced and the claim strength of the information.
Lang & Yegiyan suggest that emotional, negative, and arousing messages are all more effective than messages which are non emotional. This gives a good jumping off point for types of statements I want to use in my print PSAs. Utilizing a pretest to determine which message type on its own is most negative, emotionally arousing, etc., will be useful and help me to formulate good PSAs.

Going back to the study, the design was very complex; featuring a 2x2x3x2x4 mixed factorial design. They asked 51 undergraduate students to watch PSAs chosen from a database of over 300 and then rate them on a scale created to measure message effectiveness.

Because they had so many variables and conditions, there were a lot of results. Here are some of the highlights:

-Lang & Yegiyan found that there was a main effect in which negative messages were remembered more than positive ones, regardless of the level of arousing content.

-The claim strength was found to have a strong effect on arousing messages- weak strength lead to ineffective PSAs while strong claims lead to effective ones. This means that if the emotional arousal in a PSA is strong, it is very important to ensure the message is also strong or the PSA will not work and may have an adverse effect.

-While negatively framed PSAs with calm messages (not arousing) were found to increase in recognition with stronger claims, positively framed ones were remembered best with claims of medium strength. Strong and weak claims were not remembered well at all.

This last result I found very interesting as it seems out of place from the others. It would be interesting to build upon that hypothesis and test it in slightly different conditions.

Overall, the study argues that the worst thing a PSA can do is to create an ad with strong arousing content and weak claims, which is something I think many of the PSAs that have been created tend to do. There is a lot of drama in the PSA with not a lot of power behind it.

Example of a pretty crappy PSA billboard:

Here is another, this time in video format, which attempts to show kids what will happen if they try smoking marijuana. Do you think this is an effective ad? I feel like it falls into the trap where the situations are over dramatized and seem unrealistic. It was called "Sixth Sense" because the kid being offered drugs sees the future consequences of trying weed.

Sixth Sense - Anti-Marijuana PSA

Lang, A., & Yegiyan, N. (2008). Understanding the interactive effects of emotional
appeal and claim strength in health messages. Journal of Broadcasting and
Electronic Media, 52(3), 432-447.
Link to abstract and other info here
Link to PDF here