The freakonomics blog on the NYT has an interesting look at the role of conformity in communications. Basically, it’s hard to convince people to stop doing something if they think everyone else is doing it. People don’t want to rise above the crowd and be exemplary. So public service messages that suggest that many people are doing something (like binge drinking), which is usually the rationale for the advertising campaigns in the first place, is less likely to discourage this behaviour then advertisements that suggest that teenage drunkenness is (still) the exception rather than the rule. The problem is that our political and media coverage of issues like teenage sex, drug use and alcohol abuse tend to emphasise (and, yes, sensationalise for political effect) that there has been a massive increase in these activities and the messages in these debates only serve to re-inforce, in undesirable ways, the tendency towards conformity that is strongly felt by teenagers in particular. And because we tell them that everyone (more or less) is binge drinking then guess what they will do.
Thanks to Paull Young for the pointer.
