Contagious Insight /
Fingers in their ears / People seem hardwired to ignore safety warnings. In a study conducted by Mark Lehto, a professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University in the US, just one out of 54 subjects took heed of a glue bottle warning to use it only in a ventilated room. He concludes: ‘If someone’s main goal is to complete a task, the benefits he perceives in finishing may outweigh the risks of skipping a safety step. Similarly, if someone’s out to have a good time, the benefits he sees in having fun may outweigh the risks he sees…’
In the same vein, there exists a concept called ‘habituation’ that describes people’s habit of paying less attention to certain warnings the more they encounter them.
A different path / Basically, people are less likely to adhere to a warning if it interferes with something they enjoy (or inhibits their performance) and they are more likely to ignore a warning if they’ve heard it before.
Bike for Brussels’ cycle-safety message therefore was likely to have a hard time getting through since it interferes with the riders’ enjoyment and is likely something they will have heard a hundred times before.
But The Earworm of the Day engages its target audience with a novel, indirect message. Even if cyclists have been told a thousand times before that it’s dangerous to wear headphones, they are almost certain not to expect a message delivered like this. What’s more, the campaign attempts to remove a barrier to adopting a safer behaviour by offering an alternative to headphones. Although, admittedly, this is done in tongue-in-cheek fashion.
