The Anti-Smoking Commercials: A Study of Television's Impact on Behavior

Few comparable peacetime crusades in this century have matched the scope and message frequency of the anti-cigarette smoking campaign launched on television by various health organizations in the late 1960's. The networks and local stations devoted many thousands of dollars of free time to the effort. By the end of 1969 there was hardly a viewer who hadn't been amused-or felt abused-by the antismoking commercials. In effect, the commercials attempted' to cajole, reason, and sometimes scare millions of people into abandoning an integral part of their daily lives. Simultaneously, they tried to prevent millions of others from taking up this widely accepted and practiced social habit. But was the campaign effective? Did the commercials persuade cigarette smokers to cut down or quit? Did they influence nonsmokers not to start? By examining the answers to these and other questions, perhaps a little more light can be shed on the persuasive power of mass communication, and the medium of television in particular. Communications research has long reflected a preoccupation with the persuasive power of the mass media. As Klapper notes, case studies, laboratory experiments with small groups, and surveys involving thousands of respondents have all been undertaken to determine whether a given communication had persuasive effects, what kind of effects (if any), and what conditions were responsible for restricting or facilitating the persuasion process.2