"How Do You Like The Odds?"
Here’s a rather gruesome public service commercial from the American Lung Association. It reminds me of the U.N landmine commercial that was popular earlier in the year. While there seems to be tons of research on the effect of videogame violence (mostly biased), I wonder if there are any recent studies on the effect of this type of shock-advertising on the viewing public. For instance, does watching an anti-smoking ad like the one linked above actually produce the desired effect on the targetted population?
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There is probably something more recent, but a classic text by Fleming & Levie, "Message Design: Principles from the Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences" (or something like that–I'm going from memory), distilled a bunch of research. I think it was in a chapter on attitude change that they dealt with the effects of fear and other emotional triggers. Have a look. It's old now, but it is still a great read and reference.