Judicious Use of Persuasive Threat Messages Related to Personal Health: Application of the Extended Parallel Process Model to Contrasting Cases

Sample

In 2009, a public service announcement created by a police department in Wales went viral on YouTube and created a controversy over its graphic depiction of a traffic accident caused by texting while driving (Nick1111341, 2009). As the video opens, three teenage girls are in a compact car driving down the road at a fairly high speed while the driver texts a boy to tell him her friend in the back seat likes him. As she enters the message, her lack of concentration causes her to cross the center line hitting head-on the car coming from the opposite direction. Other vehicles then become involved in the catastrophe as well. When the cars collide, the viewer sees graphic images of the three girls thrown about the car both in real time and in slow motion. The producers spared little in the way of gory details. In the car that caused the accident, blood and flying glass abound, and we even hear the sound of the neck of one of the girls snapping. The viewer quickly realizes that the screaming driver survived but is severely injured, and her two friends are dead. In another car, young parents in the front seat also appear dead while a little boy in the back seat yells, “Mommy, Daddy, wake up!” Next to him we see an extreme close-up of the blank stare of a baby who also apparently has been killed.