Introduction
Tobacco has become one of the major health issues, affecting most of the American population and other world citizens. Many people are dying from life threatening sicknesses caused by tobacco and it is unfortunate that despite major campaigns to warn people of the dangers of cigarette smoking, they rarely change their attitude toward this habit. Tobacco related deaths are the result of life threatening sicknesses and victims rarely survive to recount their ordeal. In America alone, tobacco accounts for 15% of total deaths in the total population and approximately 8,000 Americans die from direct effects of cigarette smoking weekly (Ropeik & Gray 2007, p.140).
While the social effects of cigarette smoking remain tremendous, the costs to human life and monetary value are staggering. Ironically however, Americans continue to worry about other problems like unsafe drinking water, West Nile Virus, food additives and pesticides while cigarette smoking continues to send a large part of the population to their graves through tobacco related illnesses. Besides, it has caused more deaths than the American soldiers killed in World War II, Korea, Vietnam and several other conflicts combined (Rabinoff 2007, p14).
Yet, Americans have not staged any major protest against this affliction in the same manner that they mobilized against these wars and worse still, the entire society continues to display a high degree of indifference towards the adverse effects that cigarette smoking continues to have on its population. It provides a person with immediate and reliable pleasures. Most people are also misinformed and therefore tend to view smoking as a positive behavior that will yield a desirable outcome even though the habit is counterproductive (Bayram et al, p 33).
The peculiarities of anti-smoking campaigns
Given the above-mentioned facts, it is of the crucial importance to launch an anti-smoking campaign, which would possibly make this very dangerous habit less attractive. In this paper, we need to discuss the factors which determine the outcome of such programs; in particular, we need to focus on the methods of persuasion, the peculiarities of the audience, and the source of communication. However, prior to doing it we should discuss the key features of such activities.
Certainly, the major and ultimate objective is to prevent a person from starting smoking cigarettes or to help him or her to break out of it. In order to achieve this goal it is necessary to cope with several important tasks, namely, to convince an individual that the pleasures of smoking are ephemeral and that in fact, this is just another form of addiction, which turns people into slaves. Secondly, it is essential to dissipate some myths of smoking. For instance, there is a widely held opinion that such behavior is fashionable, and educators have to prove that this is just a misconception (Bayram et al, p 13). In addition to that, campaigners must ensure that the target audience receives their message; they need to pay special attention to dissemination of information.
On the whole, we can say that social workers and psychologists have to fight against almost insuperable odds. We should say that there is such phenomenon as implicit advertising, which means that a certain product is not openly promoted but there are some inconspicuous elements, which significantly affect the decisions of the consumer. The cigarettes receive such type of advertisement; for example by smoking on telescreens many popular icons make people believe that cigarette is an attribute of a powerful and strong person. Thus, we need to undermine this influence.
The factors determining the outcome of the campaign
Source
Therefore, at this point, we need to analyze the factors, which contribute the success or failure of persuasion. When a person realizes that he or she is being persuaded, the first question he asks is “Who says so”, in other words, we may speak about the source or the communicator (Perloff, 2003, p 149). The personality of the speaker often plays the most decisive role, because very often people focus only on the personality but not on the message, itself.
The reason why so many anti-smoking programs have failed is the inappropriate choice of source. The major problem is that students may deliberately disregard the message if they feel that a social worker lacks certain qualities such as competence, or charisma. Naturally, there are some other traits, such as sense of humor, ability to put oneself into the position of the audience and so forth. These are compulsory skills for any leader.
However, in this case, we should speak about a particular age group from 15 to 21. These people are either teenagers or adolescence. While forming their judgment about their interlocutor, they concentrate on his or her appearance, and it goes without saying that anti-smoking campaigners have to physically attractive. A good communicator must not be dogmatic or categorical. Attractiveness includes not only physical appearance; it also comprises eloquence and sense of humor (Harris et al, 2002, p 122). The audience must not feel that they are forced to certain conclusions or actions; otherwise they will resist this influence, even despite the best intentions of the speaker.
Secondly, we cannot overlook the level of expertise and competence. However, only expertise is not sufficient in this case. Certainly, there are many practitioners, social workers, or teachers, who are very knowledgeable in this sphere, but they must be able to bring this information home to teenagers in a way, which is understandable to them, and this ability is a very rare gift. Many anti-smoking campaigns did not succeed mostly because the communicators could not expound their ideas. This is the first factor, determining the outcome of persuasion.
Message factors
Message factors consist of several components such as structure, content, and the form of presentation. As regards the structure, we should first focus on the qualities of the argument, which can be either one-sided or two-sided (Perloff, 2002, 177). Speakers, who prefer one-sided messages, usually present evidence, supporting only their views and beliefs. This is probably the major fallacy of anti-smoking campaigners, who speak only about the dangers of this habit and its negative effects on health.
However, they deliberately ignore the fact that some people may actually enjoy doing it, thus, the appeals of social workers are often lost upon adolescents. The essence of two-sided persuasion is that it presents opposing views and substantiates one of them. In theory, we need to employ two-sided argumentation in order to be more convincing. Considering the age of the audience, we need to break the stereotype that a cigarette makes anyone stronger, cleverer or more attractive.
Every argument can appeal either to emotions or to the reason (Tindale, 2001, 77). The most widespread strategy of social workers is to appeal to emotions, namely to fear. We have to acknowledge that very often many advertisements only threaten smokers with the risk of lung cancer, or other diseases. It is very unlikely that arguments appealing to fear, can work successfully, because every person (irrespective of his age, cultural origins, academic level etc) feels aversion to threats.
Partly, this is the reason why so many attempts have just the opposite effect. With the reference to this issue, we should say that teenagers are most resilient to such arguments, because at the age of fifteen or seventeen, a person tries to assert oneself, he or she wants to be self-sufficient, independent, and he deliberately disregards admonitions of adults, especially, if they are based only on fear (Harris et al, 2002, p 122).
The scholars also attach primary importance to conclusion-drawing, which can be either implicit or explicit (Perloff, 2002, p 179; Tindale, 2001). The error of many anti-smoking campaigns is that their main message is too self-evident or even banal. Of course, no one can deny that smoking is dangerous, anti-social, harmful, and so forth, but people hear these ideas almost on a daily basis, and, ironically, they no longer listen to them.
Undoubtedly, lecturers may mention adverse consequences, which smoking entails, but this must not be the main focus. It is vital to prove that there are some other alternatives to smoking such as, for instance, contact with friends, sports, literature, music, cinema, etc; and these things are more pleasant and healthier than such dangerous habits as smoking. Theoretically, social workers must only give a prompt or hint, but the audience has to arrive at their own conclusion.
The outcome of the message also depends upon the evidence presented. In academic circles, the reliability and credibility of the source plays the most important role, but for teenagers or adolescents is hard of any importance, because all of them are perfectly aware of the risks that they run when they start smoking. There is one mistake, which the communicators should avoid, and it is the oversaturation of facts. Some people tend to present some statistical data or findings of most recent studies, but this is of no interest to teenagers or adolescents. Thus, we have discussed the so-called message factors. However, we cannot overlook the peculiarities of target population.
The peculiarities of the audience
Prior to developing the strategies, aimed at curbing nicotine addiction among teenagers, the scholars need to consider the key features of the target population. They need to analyze such parameters as age, erudition, cultural origins, and the influence of the parents. As has been noted earlier, teenagers are disinclined to admit the argumentation of other people, especially if we are speaking about adults.
They may not enter debate openly, but in their inner circle, every argument, presented by social workers is rejected. By trying to be independent, adolescents often ignore even the most persuasive evidence. Furthermore, within the boundaries of their peer group, they are very afraid of breaking the stereotypes, accepted among them, even if they realize that smoking is dangerous. This can be defined as the herd instinct and it takes effort for a person to overcome it (Hogg, 2002, p 352).
The second parameter is the level of erudition, because even at the age of fifteen a person may not know about all the dangers of smoking. Naturally, such opportunity is very slim but we cannot eliminate it. Occasionally, even cultural or ethnic origins present certain difficulties because in some countries, smoking pipe or hookah is not viewed as something harmful or anti-social. Yet, one of the most important audience factors is the influence of parents. Many of them do not realize that by smoking cigarettes they set very bad example for their offsprings. Children may acquire this habit by emulating the behavior of parents.
They assume that their parents cannot be mistaken, and subsequently they ignore the evidence that nicotine only shortens the span of their lives. In part, this diminishes the net effects of anti-smoking campaigns, so parents should also become active participants and at first they need to get out of this habit, otherwise the efforts of other people will be in vain.
Information diffusion
The results of many social studies indicate the outcome of persuasion campaign is often determined by effective diffusion of information (Weenig, 1991 p 734). Many programs are designed to address a specific group of the population, such students learning in a particular school or college, but they do not make allowances for social networks, and the relations between various groups. According to the theory of weak ties, developed by Michael Granovetter, an individual often makes his decisions according to the information, received from accidental acquaintances, people whom he may barely knows.
Moreover, this hypothesis implies that a person often overlooks the data, provided by the authorities (Weenig, 1991 p 735), This partially explains the failures of many anti-smoking campaigns, because educators, social workers, practitioners seem represent authorities at least in the eyes of teenagers. However, they admit the arguments of their class or group mates.
Judging from the above-mentioned facts, we need to ensure that the message is conveyed to a large number of people. At first teenagers must be made aware of the program itself, secondly, they must be encouraged to pass the information to others. In this way, we may possibly minimize the effects of peer pressure and help teenagers to become free from prejudices, established in their group because we cannot change the interaction among adolescents from outside. Within the boundaries of the group there are least contractible (Hogg et al, 2008, p 194). Nonetheless, if this evidence is presented by their coevals, they may be more flexible.
Usually adolescents quit smoking not because of their parents prohibitions or the admonitions of medical workers; on the contrary they do so, when they see that this habit is no longer popular among people of the same age. The theory of weak and strong ties has not been tested in connection with anti-smoking campaigns but it seems that this method should be at least applied to this problem. For a considerable period of time, psychologists and sociologists studied the threats of peer pressure and Granovetters hypothesis is a probable solution to this problem.
Conclusion
Therefore, having discussed the factors, which determine the outcomes of persuasion campaigns, we can conclude that anti-smoking programs often do not achieve their main goal due to their dogmatism. Psychologists need to make sure that their message is not categorical or imperative. Secondly, it should not sound like admonition or threat, as this produces only the opposite reaction. Finally, health organizations should encourage teenagers to spread their communication to other people. This will make the effects of peer pressure less acute and smoking may not be so fashionable and attractive.
References
Baumeister, RF 1999, The self in social psychology, Psychology Press, New York.
Bayram, N, Owing, JH, Cheetah, A, & D’lppolito, R 2005, Smoking and health: new research, Nova Publishers, New York.
Harris. M. Butterworth (2002). Developmental psychology: a student’s handbook. Taylor & Francis.
Hogg. M. Vaughan. G (2008). Social Psychology. Pearson Education.
Perloff. R (2002). The dynamics of persuasion: communication and attitudes in the 21st century. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Rabinoff, M 2007, Ending the tobacco holocaust: how the tobacco industry affects our health pocketbook, and political freedom and what we can do about it, Elite Books, Santa Rosa.
Ropeik, D & Gray, G 2002, Risk: a practical guide for deciding what’s really safe and what’s dangerous in the world around you, Houghton Mifflin Books, Boston.
Slovic, P 2001, Smoking: risk, perception & policy, Sage Publishers, Seminole.
Smith, ER & Mackie, DM 2000, Social Psychology, Psychology Press, New York.
Tindale. C.W (2001). Rhetorical argumentation: principles of theory and practice. SAGE.
Weenig, Mieneke W (1991). “Communication network influences on information diffusion and persuasion”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 61(5). pp. 734-742.