Do your health messages nudge or nag?

Do you trigger the psychological bias - Reactance? (Week 2 of 4 - Clarity Series) The audio is your second breath work called 'Square Breathing'.

I’ve been called a nag before.

Can you avoid it if you work in public health?

So I wondered why.

And that wondering led to a little unknown bias which made me feel a whole lot better!

So this week we ask do health comms feel like a nudge toward a good choice or a nag?

You most likely already know when people feel bombarded or pressured they will zone you out; but did you know they can push back too. This is know as Reactance Bias (Brehm, 1996): our instinctive response to protect freedom when we feel it’s being taken away.

Even helpful advice, if delivered without sensitivity or choice can feel controlling.

And if I’m honest, when I look back over the twenty years working in health I can now see that a lot of our health canpaigns may have felt like a nag.

• Don’t eat that

• Walk more

• Did you book the smear test yet?

  

Even with good intentions, we can fall into a trap: thinking more messages = more impact. (See week 1 of Clarity series).

But to an overloaded audience, even helpful advice can feel like a nag.

And when people feel they’re being told what do - without choice - they resist. This resistance can be emotional, behavioural, or simply a quiet scroll past.

This feeling further pushes clarity away for our audiences.

Understanding social norms is a successful way to avoid or shift this potential reaction and we go deeper into that at our Social Norms Summer School called CopyCats. (Yearly Supporters get a free ticket.)

But an easy way to join the dots is to reflect personally. Have you ever fought for something even if it wasn’t in your interest? Because you perceived it as being taken away. Can you remember a time in your life when you rebelled?

I can.

Especially those teenager years.

Freedom is my highest value.

Or so I thought, but maybe I was just responding to controlling events.

You may also be able to see it happening in the award wining TRUTH health campaigns where the strategy was to reveal to young people the manipulations of tobacco industry so that they would rebel against it. With the awareness of the efforts to control came a response to pull away. And it worked. It is considered an incredibly impactful campaign.

But it can also work against you. Especially if your copy accidentally triggers it.

Read below for how you spot the signs in your copy and how to tackle them ⬇️

Before the break to paid - please receive your second gifted breathwork to help you focus and gain more clarity. From August these will be only in the paid section. It is delivered by the incredible Sabine. Because your thinking matters too