Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills @thomhills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Quickquid




In this quick quid advert they try to paint the situation as one of ‘just plain folks: similarity altercast’ (Werkmeister, 1948) by creating the impression that the kind of situation in which one might fall short between paydays is one that occurs to almost everyone. This situation in and of itself inspires fear in the intended audience whilst also creating a feeling of acceptance and legitimacy around what most people regard the very risky option of seeking financial help from a short term lender.
        Through trying to create the impression of this being a social norm and then trying to associate their brand with the occurrence of this situation. The advertisement uses social modelling also by people on the film demonstrating getting loans from quick quid or their smart phones and laptops in an easy and guiltfree fashion. Bandura and Menlove (1968) conducted a study in which 32 girls and 16 boys whose ages varied from 3-5 formed 3 groups. All of these children had an aversion to dogs and in particular interacting with dogs. The first group watched a video in which someone interacted and played with a dog, the second group watched a video showing a series of dogs ranging in size and ‘fearfulness’, and the third group watched a video entirely unrelated to animals. In the consequent task where the children were asked into a room with a brown cocker spaniel and then were asked to perform ‘escalating tasks’ (walking the dog, feeding the dog a biscuit, touching the dog, etc.) those in condition one who had seen a person modelling non fearful behaviour and interaction with a dog were far more likely to achieve higher levels of interaction with the spaniel than the other two groups although those in condition two where they were seeing images of dogs faired better than those in condition three.
        Most people are prudent when in comes to engaging in any kind of short term lending lending due to what is usually and extortianate rate of return. These kinds of short term lenders tend to pray mostly on the misinformation and lack of knowledge of potential customers. Quick quid has ( as is visible in the very small writing in the video) a representative APR of 1734% therefore waiting to pay back the money on your next payday will cost you a significant amount, but by normalising the behaviour and by socially modelling their demographic by demonstrating others do it they can obfuscate this fact. This cleaver combination of tactics make the audience feel as though this is ok  and safe.


Bandura, A., & Menlove, F. L. (1968). Factors determining vicarious extinction of avoidance behavior through symbolic modeling. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 99-108.
Werkmeister, W. H. (1948). An introduction to critical thinking. Lincon, NB: Johnsen Publishing. 

1 comment:

  1. Nice coverage of Bandura and Menlove, though it was covered last week. What can we do about this? Is there another study similar to Bandura that might be relevant here?

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