Manipulating Hollywood

A recent Time piece on Harvard School of Public Health's campaign to persuade Hollywood filmmakers to take out smoking or to make smoking look unglamorous (where smoking is a necessary part of the script) was eye opening.

I never knew that Hollywood was persuaded once before to take up a public health issue. It bought into the designated driver campaign to reduce drunken driving accidents. And the campaign worked because it reaches basic human nature. As written in Time magazine:

"If there's one thing health experts know, it's that you don't influence behavior by telling people what to do. You do it by exposing them to enough cases of people behaving well that it creates a new norm. What made the designated-driver concept catch on in the 1980s was partly that Harvard and the ad agencies it worked with persuaded TV networks to slip the idea into their shows. There's a reason a designated-driver poster appeared in the bar on Cheers, and it's not because it made the jokes funnier."

Harvard which led that campaign believes there were obvious benefits to influencing the 'superpeers' of TV. "'The idea appeared in 160 prime-time episodes over four years,' says Jay Winsten, HSPH's associate dean. 'Drunk-driving fatalities fell 25% over the next three years.'"

The idea is elucidated by Robert Cialdini in his influential (for lack of a better word) book 'Influence': as more important or influential people do (or don't do) something, the more of mass public are persuaded to join in doing (or not doing) that same thing. The same idea explains why the 'superpeer', the composite person portrayed by films and other media, is able to influence teenagers' drug and sexual behavior.

As the article details, the campaign is working in Hollywood, albeit slowly. It's also building momentum as other organizations devoted to health and public safety join in.

"As Harvard closes in from one side, a dozen health groups including the American Medical Association are calling for reduction of smoking in movies and on TV, and 41 state attorneys general have signed a letter seeking public-service ads at the beginning of any DVD that includes smoking. Like smokers, studios may conclude that quitting the habit is not just a lot healthier but also a lot smarter."

Lesson: To change people's behavior, enlist people like Scarlett Johansson!