Splicetoday

Pop Culture
Oct 27, 2008, 12:19PM

Anti-smoking ads counter productive

Seems like smokers are betrayed by their subconscious cravings.

Marketing goes neural:

But you can depend on the brain, he said, maintaining that's why neuromarketing, or the study of how the brain responds to marketing stimuli, is here to stay.

Mr. Lindstrom said one of the most surprising findings of the study involved warning labels placed on cigarette packs. When project researchers asked test subjects if the warning labels worked, most said "yes." These were the subjects' conscious answers. But their subconscious answers told a different story. When researchers repeated the same question and flashed images of the labels while subjects underwent an fMRI, the images activated "craving spots" in the brain, indicating that the warnings made the smokers want to smoke more, not less.

In a different study, researchers found that anti-smoking ads had the same counterintuitive effect.

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