Describe how researchers have used resistance tactics to reduce smoking rates in children.

Describe how researchers have used resistance tactics to reduce smoking rates in children.

How do we protect our attitudes? One strategy has been to use what is called attitude inoculation. This is based on a theory similar to how we inoculate ourselves against diseases. We expose ourselves to a weak form of the disease, which in turn allows our bodies to build defenses. Similarly, in terms of attitude, we can expose ourselves to weak attacks on our attitude, which allows us to strengthen our defenses against stronger attacks that may come later.

How well does this work? Well, there has been significant research looking at how we can inoculate children against peer pressure to smoke. In carefully conducted research that was done schools in the US, researchers were interested in how exposing people to weak forms of tobacco advertising could actually result in students being less likely to smoke.

As you can see from the figure below, attitude-inoculated children are half as likely to start smoking than children who were not exposed to the weak pro-smoking advertising.

If we can attitude-inoculate children against smoking advertising, can we inoculate children against the influence of advertising in general? There has been a move in the education domain to try to make children more media savvy. In other words, developing training programs to attempt to give children a more realistic understanding of commercials. Very young children cannot make the distinction between what is reality and what is a television commercial. These kinds of training programs are designed to help children understand what commercials are and how they distort reality in order to sell a product.