Change from Reception versus Change from Response
8th February 2010
USA Today has been hammering away on research that proves, Sitting Kills You! I won’t bore you with the details that you can sort out to your heart’s content in much the way I sorted buttons in a button box for my GreatGrandMother Mattie when she needed to divert me on rainy days. I’ll just note two big buttons: Observational Method and Small Effects. But, there’s a bigger button in all of this besides diverting children and adults by sorting details.
USA Today is warning its readers of impending doom and death from a threat in their own hands, or in this case, their own backsides. Sitting, not Not Exercising, but just Sitting, kills you. And USA Today cites the research to prove it. And they do this repeatedly.
Now, of course, it is obvious that no one reading these stories is putting much stock in them. Look at your window. Do you see your neighbors running around the yard every 20 minutes, then racing back into the house? If you look outside, you won’t see others because we’re all inside, sitting. That’s what you get in a PostModern society driven by science, technology, and education. A lot of sitting around. Which is fatal for you.
Thus, we have what appears to be a massive failure of persuasion theory. Geez, you’ve got repeated play of a death risk that anyone can easily control and no one’s doing anything about it. Yeah, right, persuasion theory. Pah!
Except that persuasion theory is working here, just not the way you expect it. USA Today and most journalistic outlets nowadays have learned that they can attract eyeballs and ears to their advertising through health and safety stories. People see the Headline: Sitting Kills! so they pick up the . . . ads. The persuasion goal here is not Stand Up, but Buy This. USA Today would like everyone to be happy, safe, rich, and long lived, but not if it means losing readers for its advertising.
Thus, you get this strange disconnect between the Horror Stories in the news and No Change in your Horror Story behavior. You’re killing time reading about how sitting around kills you and as long as you see the ads, it’s all good. Persuasion theory is good as long as you understand the difference between Change from Reception (read the ads) to Change from Response (read the story).