When PSAs take advantage of prejudice, bias or ignorance

[CN: Racist imagery below]

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What does the image above make you think? While there’s a wide range of possible reactions, I predict the vast majority of people would be simultaneously repulsed by the racist imagery while possibly agreeing with the actual messages of the poster (ie. car safety and minimising waste). I hope most people wouldn’t consider this as an acceptable way to make a public service announcement or that the benefit of the announcement outweighs the splash damage. This is because the splash damage here is so apparent to us because it’s “vintage” and taken from another cultural context.

But this problem actually pops up quite a bit in public service announcements and private advocacy. While both of these try to promote things that we might broadly agree with, they are types of marketing and marketing techniques often take advantage of human ignorance, bias and other foibles. This makes for a natural tension and it’s very easy to make something that advocates for one form of social good while making another worse (or just promoting ignorance). Here are some examples:

Cigarettes have CHEMICALS!!

There are lots of public announcements that play up the chemical nature of cigarettes, like this one:

Now, there’s a lot of shit in cigarette smoke so not much argument there. (Although I’m not sure where they got the DDT from since it seems like the only way DDT would get into cigarettes is if it’s sprayed onto tobacco leaves. It seems like this is very unlikely as India is the only tobacco-producing country I could find where there’s been a flagged use of DDT as a single case.)

But the point is that this PSA relies and promotes chemophobia. It’s trying to scare people with the large number of chemicals that cigarettes have (unlike all these fruit). It’s trying to scare people with long, unfamiliar, sciencey names. It’s also trying to gross people out (mothballs!) in a very inappropriate way. Inhaling a chemical found in mothballs or rocket fuel does not automatically mean something bad will happen. It would be like saying salt contains the poisonous gas chlorine. That’s not how chemistry works. Just because methanol is a rocket fuel ingredient doesn’t mean you inhale some “essence” of rocket fuel when you smoke. That’s not what makes methanol bad.

Masturbation is shameful!!

Here’s an incarnation of the “don’t be a tosser” campaign that’s been going for a while in Australia (and it seems the UK too):

Of course part of the campaign’s punch is the derogatory nature of “tosser” and the fact that it’s associated with masturbation. Now, this is not a type of insult the origin of which has been forgotten in the mists of time. I think most people in Australia know why “tosser” is meant to be an insult. It’s not because it’s meant to be embarrassing to litter (although this campaign is trying to make littering as embarrassing as wanking).

“But surely you’re not so much of an asshole as to poo-poo an important campaign for environmental responsibility because it obliquely uses some childish taunt?” Well, yeah I am. Masturbators may not be an oppressed class but this kind of crap doesn’t help. Splash damage is splash damage.

The worst thing about speeding and killing someone is people will think you have a small dick!!

This is from the NSW RTA’s anti-speeding campaign:

They’re literally trying to appeal to men’s fear of being thought of as having a small dick as a key motivator for not speeding. It’s toxic masculinity FTW, as endorsed by a NSW government agency! I think the splash damage from something like this is a lot more serious than from the previous one. There is a genuine anxiety, mental illness and depression issue mediated through societal obsession with penis size and ‘manhood’. And this campaign is premised on the idea that people with small penises will and should be made fun of and you shouldn’t speed, less you be thought of in this way.

This is very similar to PETA’s bullshit about how eating chicken decreases penis size, which I covered here.

Women, amirite?

To finish off, here is some vintage PSA misogyny again from the WWII period:

There’s a lot that’s appalling about these and a lot that’s interesting. Such as:

• All the women will be read as white, able-bodied, of average build etc — presumably because the idea of one of “our” soldiers having sex with anyone else was scandalous and unthinkable.
• In all 3 cases, women are portrayed as the carriers of disease, those responsible for giving it to “our boys”.
• The poster on the right even seems to be personifying venereal disease as a woman.
• The madonna-whore complex is strong with this one
• It’s premised on dividing women into the category of “clean/unclean”
• And many many more!

But the point is that this may have potentially had some positive effect on reducing STI transmissions. Maybe if we went back in time to speak to the creators of these posters they would not actually have realised what’s wrong with them. There’s a good chance they would have gotten defensive about them or have gone the “but it works route”, or its cousin “but I have to use these techniques or nobody would listen” or even “it’s not between this poster and a ‘nicer’ poster, it’s between this poster and no poster at all”.

For me, I’m not fully decided as to where to draw the line between what works and what has no splash damage. I would lean against splash damage for most cases but there might be counterexamples that would give me pause. But at the very least I think one thing’s clear: we should be looking for splash damage, identifying it, being aware of it and taking as many steps as necessary to prevent it. Because it’s there. A lot. Even in messaging that seeks to promote a genuine public good.

Where would you draw the line? When would you be pragmatic/utilitarian about a PSA that panders to ignorance or bias?