Sad Faces Make People Support Social Campaigns
Anthropomorphic Trash Can The anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic trash cans used as stimuli. See full posters here. Trash cans from Ahn et al. At the end of last year, the international aid organization Oxfam decided to dramatically change their advertising tactics in their campaign to fight hunger in Africa, replacing pictures of sad, starving children with happier landscapes featuring the continent's natural wonders. Respondents to a survey put out to the organization had called images of people beset by hunger and disease "depressing, manipulative and hopeless." Manipulative? Maybe. But effective? A new study suggests yes, perhaps to a greater extent than any lush landscape. In Psychological Science, a group of marketing professors from the Canda and South Korea suggest that we're more likely to support a social cause if the campaign...