we can haz blog?

......

Now how would you feel about the ad if I told you that poor mom with lung cancer was actually a paid actor?

Yikes.

Changes the spin on things, doesn't it?

In the spirit of talking so much about deception, I decided to look up its use in PSAs.

A study by Shanahan and Hopkins in 2007 examined the use of deception in non-profit PSAs. The above 'Sunshine' ad, made for the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco, was one that made the mistake of using deception. When you are relying on donations and volunteer work, people apparently expect you to be truthful.

In the case of the Sunshine ad, people found out it was an actor. The backlash was swift and hard: there were over 5,000 complaints registered to the MPAAT.

This article did a great job of going over several interesting theories that have been developed about convincing people not to do things due to the Protection Motivation Theory, including the idea that the said behavior could endanger others. Shanahan and Hopkins used the endangers others idea in MADD (Mothers against Drunk Driving) printed advertisements and manipulated the type of ad people received.

The researchers created ads based on the design of current MADD ads. There were four treatment levels, as seen above. One version used implication, meaning that they did not disclose what happened to the children in the image and let the reader draw their own conclusions. The second was supposed to feature two children who had been killed by drunk driving and featured the date on which it happened. The third stated that the children were actors, and the fourth did not, but disclosed that it was an actor portrayal later in the questionnaire.

There were four measures conducted: a negative emotional response conducted via a Likert scale, overall attitude toward the ad, perceived social responsibility toward the sponsors, and the intention to donate which was adapted from an intention of purchase scale. The researchers also had participants write down a response to the ad right after viewing it summarizing how they felt in a sentence or two. They used a manipulation check to ensure the participants understood what was going on so they would not skew the results and eliminated those who did not realize when an actor was supposedly used or not.

Participants were a carefully chosen convenience sample from all across Texas and was very similar to the actual population.

The results were very interesting, and since there were so many measurements taken, there were a lot of results. Here are some that I found especially useful and relevant:

-Using real victims seemed to be the best bet for non-profit advertisers to use, since it had a significantly higher emotional response, perceived responsibility of the group, intent to donate, and attitude toward the ad than the deception or actor conditions.

-There was no difference in the intent to donate between the "implication" and "killed" levels. That means that people made the jump and believed that the children must have been seriously hurt or killed. Now using actors is probably still a bad idea, since I could end up with a situation very similar to that of the "Sunshine" commercial.

-Using actors in any sense was perceived to be socially irresponsible whether it was disclosed or not.

-Mentioning that it was an actor on the ad lowered the emotional response significantly.

Overall, it seems like real victims are the best bet. Using actors is very dangerous and deception with actors could lead to the public literally punishing the non-profit by no longer donating. If there is no way to get real victims for ads, implication is the next best thing, but still could lead to trouble.

Shanahan, K. J., & Hopkins, C. D. (2007, Summer). Truths, half-truths, and deception: Percieved social responsibility and intent to donate for a nonprofit using implicature, truth, and duplicity in print advertsing. Journal of Advertising, 36(2), 33-48. Retrieved from PsychINFO database.