Society & Culture - Posted by Tracy James-Indiana on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 16:49 - 3 Comments 
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Just say no: Is going negative the wrong approach?
"The findings are somewhat ironic because a whole lot of public service announcements say, 'Drugs are bad for you,' 'Just say no,' or 'This is your brain on drugs' with an image of an egg frying," says principal investigator Joshua Brown. "What we're seeing is that negative messages are not having the same impact on the brain." (Credit: "frying eggs" via Shutterstock)
INDIANA U. (US) — Negative anti-drug messages—like the frying egg “This is your brain on drugs” campaign—may not be an effective way to reach people dealing with substance abuse, a study of brain activity shows.
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Researchers found that the level of brain activity in regions of the brain that assess risk is lower in substance-dependent individuals than those who are not drug- or alcohol-dependent. These two groups process the messages differently, particularly those messages that emphasize loss or reduced prospects for gain.
“What we’re seeing is that negative messages are not having the same impact on the brain,” says principal investigator Joshua Brown, associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University.
Using neuroimaging techniques, the researchers examined the impact of different messages on the brains of substance-dependent individuals and compared them to their effects on non-substance-dependent individuals.
They also sought to determine where the problem lies in the circuit between message, brain and behavior, where the signal goes wrong. Is it in the relationship between brain activity and behavior or in the impact of the message on the brain?
Perhaps the brains of substance-dependent people are sensitive to risk, but the knowledge does not guide their behavior. Or perhaps substance-dependent people perceive messages differently in the first place.
To answer these questions, participants took part in a virtual game, the Iowa Gambling Task, often used in psychological studies on decision-making. Four decks of cards appear on a screen, and the participants were told they will either win or lose money by choosing certain decks.
The substance-dependent group showed less brain activity in response to the negatively framed message that a certain deck would lead to losses. The negative messages also led to significantly worse, riskier decisions in the substance-dependent group than in the non-user group. The full findings are published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.
The research contributes to a growing body of health communication literature that examines the impact of particular types of messages on the neural mechanisms involved in making risky decisions. It also contributes to a larger story about the regions of the brain that are activated in response to risk and danger.
One particular region, the anterior cingulate cortex, is heavily involved in a variety of clinical disorders including drug abuse, ADHD, autism, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
At stake, Brown notes, are hundreds of billions in health care costs and lost productivity, as well as questions about public policy and how best to discourage drug abuse.
“The government spends millions every year trying to discourage drug use, and a lot of the ads highlight the dangers of drugs,” he says. “Should we spend more to highlight the benefits of staying clean instead?”
Brown says they can’t yet say whether positive messages are more effective at reducing drug use because their experiment involved decisions about money rather than drugs. They are working on it, though, and have just started to look at how people make decisions with respect to drugs.
Additional researchers from Indiana University and Wayne State University co-authored the study. Funding from the National Institutes of Health, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, NARSAD Young Investigator Award, the Sydney R. Baer Jr. Foundation, and Indiana University supported the research.
Source: Indiana University
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3 Comments
Danny Hoardern
It’s a multi-billion dollar growth industry to scare the public. As a nation we’ve invested BILLIONS in trying to scare and threaten the public into changing or adopting certain behaviors. Whether it’s disaster preparedness, avoiding criminal behaviors, discouraging pre-marital sex with abstinence-only — we refuse to accept that longterm behavior change is not accomplished with fear. Using fear- and threat-based messages can be “effective” IF no longterm behavior change is needed — that’s why it sometimes works for political advertising. We virtually never hold anyone accountable for the longterm unintended negative consequences of using fear, uncertainty and doubt as a key outreach strategy. Funders in particular need to look at how they are investing money in efforts that aren’t just ineffective, they are harmful. I work in the field of emergency readiness and billions are spent to leave us less prepared. Thanks so much for your article!
Animesh Gupta
Love addiction can be broken easily but The addiction of Drugs is more prevalent in our society. Really multi million dollar fund raise by annually. Really fret about it. If we’ll not consider its consequences would be really great and worsen.
Yes, and when we tell kids “don’t run,” we wonder why their “run” neurons are immediately activated and transferred to the motor cortex.
Perhaps a condition of making drugs legal is it is illegal to talk about them (we won’t need to talk about weed plants any more than cocoa plants when it is legal!)