Stigmatizing The Other: An Exploratory Study Of Unintended Consquences Of Eating Disorder Psas

Communication professors and a graduate student research the intended and unintended consequences of public service announcements on eating disorders.

Public service announcements (PSAs) constitute one public source of information about health issues (Corrigan and Shapiro, 2010; Salmon and Atkin, 2003). Using a varied repertoire of communication strategies, PSAs aim to inform, persuade, or motivate people to change or avoid behaviors that can threaten their wellness and health (Rice and Atkin, 2009). With such aims, PSAs may often include descriptions of risky behaviors and their negative health consequences. For example, a PSA aimed at reducing obesity rates among children may depict an overweight child and emphasize lack of exercise and a sugar-heavy diet as causes of obesity. The communication of risk information can have both intended and unintended consequences (Cho and Salmon, 2007).

The intended consequences of health campaigns (i.e., behavior cessation, behavior prevention, or behavior commencement) have been repeatedly studied, as reported in Snyder and Hamilton’s (2002) and Snyder et al.’s (2004) meta-analyses. On the other hand, the study of the unintended consequences of health communication messages is scarce with a few exceptions, such as fear appeals (e.g., Witteand Allen, 2000) and psychological reactance (e.g., Dillard and Shen, 2005). Perhaps the belief that PSAs are intended to promote social good is what detracted scholars’ attention from considering undesirable effects.

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