You would think that with the slaughter of 19 kids in their school in Uvalde, Texas, a heart-broken nation would recoil in horror and give up its guns. But that hasn’t happened and with the road the nation is on, it is unlikely to. So, what gives?
As we commiserated about this latest tragedy, one of my dear friends turned to me and asked, “What do you think we could do? You’ve just written a book on marketing and consumer psych, for cryin’ out loud, what would you do? Why is aren’t people listening? Why don’t they change? Why isn’t this enough?”
“It’s hard. It’s very hard!” I replied weakly, “They have tried everything.”
But later I thought, have they really? Are we missing something?
Now, to be clear, the book[i] my friend was referring to is not at all about public policy or gun control. Rather, it is to help marketers use new techniques to influence consumers to buy their brands and message, applying recent research from the fields of cognitive psychology and behavioral science.
And now my friend was asking if those insights could help us dig our way our of this terrifying countrywide predicament?
It is hard and I don’t really know. But you have to start somewhere and so here are some thoughts.
Don’t let people be bystanders
Make it personal.
Gun control activists haven’t been idle. They are spending a lot of money on campaign donations to influence political candidates into enacting effective firearm safety laws. Most of this is to democrats, who on their own can pass no legislation. Yet, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a republican candidate can win a primary while being anti-gun. They would lose at least 15–20% of the vote to their pro-gun rival and that in most cases would be enough to sink their candidacy.
Thus, it may make more sense to shift the spending directly towards citizens rather than candidates and attempt to change their minds about who they vote for.
In the field of psychology, there is something called the “bystander effect.” It says that people are less likely to personally help someone in distress if they feel that others around them will do the needful.[1] With gun control, a little of that is going on. We all gape incredulously at all the school shootings around the country on television, but ultimately, we do nothing, hoping that others more privileged than us in the country will take care of it. But there are no such others there.
The “bystander effect” also tells us that we are more likely to act when we feel that it is on us, and that our actions will make the difference. We have to feel like our vote is of consequence. Any consumer messaging has to make people feel like their vote is helping to ease someone’s finger away from the trigger.
Another issue is that people suffer from what is called the “choice supportive bias.” People don’t choose what they prefer, rather they prefer what they choose. This means that once you make a choice, e.g. like vote for a particular politician, then you tend to stick with your choice, because changing it would somehow feel like you acted imprudently before. Thus, you have to allow a safe space for letting people change their minds without feeling a corresponding internal psychological insult.
In the future, we could appeal directly to consumers to change their votes. But because, people don’t change their minds easily, you have to do it with care. Consider the billboard that I have mocked-up as an example in the figure below: “19 kids killed in an American school. Ask not what they will do for them. Ask what you can do.”
The statement borrows from Kennedy’s famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” that moved a nation with its powerful simplicity, reminding them that the country is bigger than the individual. It lays the mental foundation for the thought that your vote has consequence. It does so empathetically by first connecting with consumers on their widespread angst that politicians do absolutely nothing for anyone other than themselves. It gives us permission to ask the voters to change their minds and their vote.
In the following statement “Times have changed. The world has changed. Can they still take your vote for granted?” gives people a safe space in which to change their minds. It says, yes, you voted for a particular politician in the past, and it was the right choice then. But now, the world has changed and it no longer is. You have the right to change your mind and go your own way.
Gun control activists can use the power of cognitive sciences to do a series of such ads, connecting directly with voters. Whether you are watching TV at home or driving by a “billboard” on the Interstate or browsing videos on YouTube, there have to be messages that remind you that it is you who can change America for the better.
Make it Real. Seeing is Believing.
Even though atrocities around the world are increasing, it often does not really feel that way. In Ukraine, 20–30,000 people, many young Russians and Ukrainians in their early twenties, have been killed. But it doesn’t feel that way, does it? It’s almost like a score on a video game. When you look at the library of war images published by the New York Times, it is Hollywood-movie like, with tough looking soldiers grimly smoking cigarettes and trekking through forests in camouflage gear.
In Syria, 400,000 people were killed over the recent years. But, it doesn’t feel that way either, does it? Not unless, you watched HBO’s 2-hour documentary “Cries for Syria.” If you did, you would see pictures of 12-year-old dead kids who were tortured, people whose heads are chopped off and little girls whose skins were peeling from a chemical attack. It could change your perspective on the Syrian war entirely.
The Vietnam war ended in part when Americans were horrified by the actions of their government and own soldiers. In one iconic photograph by AP’s Nick Ut, a nine-year-old child is seen running naked on a road after being severely burned on her back by a South Vietnamese napalm attack. It made people back here at home cry, “what the hell are we doing there?”
But the American media, unlike that in many other countries, has largely walked away from showing any stark images of war or human tragedy. Apparently, they don’t want their viewers choking on their Cheeto’s while watching their evening broadcast of the national news.
So, when 19 kids are brutally mowed down in Texas, all you see is a news anchor in his black Armani suit, blue Ferragamo tie and starched white collar shirt reel out esoteric statistics about the crime while a panel experts debate the correlations with mental health. The only thing missing — a single drop of blood.
In my book, I talk about a psychological phenomenon I call the “transparency effect.” We tend to believe that which we can see with our own eyes is truer (sometimes even when it isn’t). Conversely, that which we cannot see or experience, feels less true and less real. Thus, when the media strips these atrocities of atrocity and presents them panel discussions, it doesn’t feel like anything actually happened. It doesn’t feel like 19 kids died. It feels like a score and we are minus 19 on something, whatever that is. It is a cruel outcome that makes us numb to grievous tragedies.
In this sense, the media by sanitizing its reporting has become the unwitting partner of the gun rights lobby helping to dress up gun violence as fictional and imaginary. What we need truly is the “Napalm Girl” image of the school shooting and other mass killings in United States to make people feel and act. Let those that need to puke on their Cheeto’s get a bag.
Start a Movement
Start the safe gun use pledge.
A survey by Pew Research in 2020 showed that 44% of US adults live in a household with guns and 32% own a gun[ii]. Viewed through rose colored glasses, that says nearly 70% of US adults do not personally own a gun. Can we drive that up a little please, maybe up to 90%?
Why wait for legislation? Let’s just do it people!
Research has shown that consumers are more likely to do something if they feel like they have a choice and are not be forced into a single option. As marketers, we sometimes have the company increase the number of choices of products it offers to at least 2–3 so as to increase sales. Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, researchers at the University of Rochester, showed that when people feel like they have autonomy, they are more likely to pursue personal goals on their own steam. In other words, if you allow individuals to choose safe gun use or even give up their guns on their own, they are more likely to do it.
One way to get this going would be to start a “safe gun use” pledge that people could voluntarily sign and commit to. This could have a 10-point program including things like buying no assault weapons, keeping guns under lock and key in their house, no more than two guns in the home, etc. Each person signing the pledge could be given a green wrist band.
There could also be an ultimate pledge, with a blue wrist band, for people that pledge to own no guns. No legislation required.
There could even be a day to celebrate safe gun use when people could wear and show off their bands and feel like they are part of something bigger. The day could be a catalyst for signing up more people each year. The country could end up self-selecting into reasonable gun use groups, with not a lot of people wearing the green and blue bands in the most rural of parts of the country where hunting may be common.
The Bystander Effect
The other thing to do is to reset the mindset of the next generation. Educate kids in school to understand the gun ownership isn’t cool and sign the pledge now. In future generations, we will see the change we haven’t seen in those of the past. Further, kids can be mobilized into encouraging their parents and favorite uncles and aunts to also sign the pledge. Would you really say no to your impassioned 15-year-old?
Beyond kids, there is real value in having adults have the conversation about safe gun use amongst themselves. We discussed the choice supportive bias before. A corollary of that bias is that people tend to believe that whatever it is that they do themselves, is the right way to do things (even when it isn’t). You prefer what you choose and what you do. I suspect that most gun owners believe that they keep and use their guns safely and responsibly — even when they don’t. By running a campaign (see figure above) to have people exchange ideas on safe gun ownership practices with each other, we can effect a groundswell of change.
In the example I have mocked up above, I illustrate yet another principle, namely “advice giving,” that behavioral scientists have discovered in their research on what helps people change. It turns out that when we give advice to others on positive behaviors, our own commitment to those behaviors increases. In other words, both the advice giver and taker benefit from the dialog. Thus, my billboard leverages that finding to drive better, more committed gun safety conversations in the future with the “Give a Little and Take a Little” approach.
Getting Gun Safety to 100%
Ultimately, a path to firearm safety could be through individual choice. Let’s get gun ownership down to 10% of American adults, the ones that truly need it. Let’s get gun safety up to 100%.
The ideas presented here are thought starters. I invite others, particularly behavioral scientists and cognitive psychologists, to weigh in. Let marketers do what they do best, namely, help consumers make better choices.
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[If this was of interest, you may also want to see my author site http://sandeepdayal.com.]
[1] More recently, some of the conclusions of this research have been challenged. However, I use the principles here until such time as researchers clarify the circumstances under which the bystander effect works best.
[i] https://amzn.to/3ygN3cO, Branding Between the Ears — Using Cognitive Science to Build Lasting Customer Connections, Sandeep Dayal, McGraw Hill, 2022
[ii] https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx; What Percentage of Americans Own Guns? Lydia Saad, November 13, 2020
Copyright Sandeep Dayal 2022. Originally published on the author’s Medium feed. Used by permission.
He is author of Branding Between the Ears: Using Cognitive Science to Build Lasting Customer Connections (McGraw Hill, 2021)
He has served 50+ clients in over 100 engagements around the world (including 15+ major countries in the EU, LatAm and Asia). He is regarded as one of the leading minds in Marketing Strategy and has co-authored articles in Marketing Management, McKinsey Quarterly and Strategy & Business. His current research focuses on Cognitive Branding and Cognitive Selling, which integrates the latest advances in neuroscience and psychology, to offer a completely new way for developing modern power brands - and drive up sales performance.
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