Blog 6: Smoking is Bad

Graphic Cigarette Labels give the term “Shock & Awe” a whole new meaning.

I remember the first time I saw one. I was at a business development conference in the Northeast and a handful of the attendees were from Canada. I stepped outside to make a phone call and one of the guys followed me out to have a smoke. Bam. There it was. A picture of two pairs of human lungs. One of them was clean and rid of anything that looked harmful. The other one looked like it had been taking a bath in maple syrup (not a Canada joke…) before being dragged up and down a driveway that had just gotten a fresh coat of sealant. It was honestly disturbing. The image took almost no explanation and it definitely hit home. I remember thinking oh my lord, who would want their lungs to look like that.

It was that precise moment that the gentleman flipped open his Zippo lighter and took his first puff.

My above point raises an interesting question? Does the graphic label work? Is it actually keeping people from smoking? A team of Communication researchers stepped out in search of the very same question. Are the labels actually working?

Nicole LaVoie, a doctorate candidate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign headed up the team of researchers looking to see if the labels were an effective method or not.

They are using “perceived freedom threats” as a way to understand the positive or negative outcomes of the labels. Using whats called the psychological reactance theory (PRT) they predict that the use of these labels may do more harm than good.

Using previous studies and data they learned that it is possible that the labels can arouse smokers and possibly anger them. Rather than a text based warning which is probably politely ignored.

The research team studied just under 500 students all of which were undergraduates at a large Midwestern University and ranged in ages 18-25.

The students were shown a graphic based warning and a text based warning and then surveyed on the level of perceived threat to their freedom.

After all of the data was compiled and analyzed, the results showed that most students positively associated the graphic warning with freedom threats.

So what does all of this mean? To put it simply, perhaps the picture of the black lung does a little more harm than good?