Fri, 10 Feb 2006

Guilt and fear motivate better than hope

This is news? The only thing I could add is that it sure doesn't hurt to have a little hope thrown into the mix, and it also helps to have a "big stick" waiting in the wings for punishment, too (and the drug warriors have certainly got that these days).

I'd like to suggest to these researchers that they could've saved a lot of time and effort by simply reading some histories on the spread of monotheist religions from the Middle East over the last two millennia ...

"Smoking pot may not kill you, but it will kill your mother," says an ad from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. In the first empirical work to examine both stated intentions and actual behavior, researchers argue that this sort of negative message - evoking both fear and guilt - is a far more effective deterrent to potentially harmful behavior than positive hopeful or feel-good messages.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

/Asatru | 0 writebacks | permanent link

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