Warning: Habits May Be Good for You

[groovedaddy]

A FEW years ago, a self-described “militant liberal” named Val Curtis decided that it was time to save millions of children from death and disease. So Dr. Curtis, an anthropologist then living in the African nation of Burkina Faso, contacted some of the largest multinational corporations and asked them, in effect, to teach her how to manipulate consumer habits worldwide.

Dr. Curtis, now the director of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, had spent years trying to persuade people in the developing world to wash their hands habitually with soap. Diseases and disorders caused by dirty hands — like diarrhea — kill a child somewhere in the world about every 15 seconds, and about half those deaths could be prevented with the regular use of soap, studies indicate.

But getting people into a soap habit, it turns out, is surprisingly hard.

To overcome this hurdle, Dr. Curtis called on three top consumer goods companies to find out how to sell hand-washing the same way they sell Speed Stick deodorant and Pringles potato chips.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/business/13habit.html?th&emc=th

[izquierdista]

1. Relentless advertising

From the article: "Through experiments and observation, social scientists like Dr. Berning have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through relentless advertising."

Before we all turn into automatons, programmed to satisfy the quarterly profit targets of P&G and Unilever, I would like to see advertising regulated as a necessary evil. One that for the good, can get people to brush their teeth regularly and wash their hands with soap and water. But it has a bad side, such as filling children up with sugary breakfast cereal and getting people to agree that going to war is a good idea (remember all the hype about the Iraq war "rollout" in the fall of 2002?).

Truth in advertising is paramount, since advertising seeks to program automatic behavior. Advertising needs to be banned where thinking is required (as in political campaigns), as it seeks to replace reasoned thinking with a conditioned emotional response. When I retire, I hope to be able to find a place where advertising has not yet penetrated -- maybe I should buy my place in the remote New Guinea highlands now, before the billboards go up.

[SheilaT]

2. Hand washing is probably the single

most effective public health measure out there.

Whenever people bring up visions of the 1918 flu epidemic and try to scare us into thinking it really could happen again, I try to make them understand that hand washing in this country probably means that it really can't happen again, so long as we still have running water and soap. Back in 1918 many homes, especially in the poorer parts of the cities, did not have indoor plumbing. People weren't washing their hands regularly. Just think about outhouses -- there was no sink out there with soap handy to wash hands afterwards. And it makes a huge difference.

Rather than bashing advertising, people here should be applauding Dr. Curtis's efforts.

[old mark]

3. You are right.

I worked in a hospital for several years, and handwashing was the main method of preventin transmission of disease. It is incredible how something so simple can be so effective.

mark

[SheilaT]

4. Thank you.

I find that when I try to point that out, especially in connection with a possible epidemic of something, even many medical people totally dismiss me. Okay, so I'm not a doctor or nurse or any other medical professional, but I'm a well-read lay person and I know something about sanitation and disease and how it's spread and simple ways to keep healthy.

I wash my hands. I try very hard not to use "anti-bacterial" soap or anti-bacterial anything, because I understand how overuse of those things is very counter-productive in the long run.