Want Your Kids to Stay off Drugs? Don’t Just Ask

July 26, 2006 — A well-meaning parent who asks an adolescent a single question, like “are you using illegal drugs?” may contribute to the use of more drugs, not less, according to a new study that shocked even the researchers.

“It was pretty startling,” says Gavin Fitzsimons, associate professor of marketing and psychology at Duke University, one of the authors of a report in the journal Social Influence.

Fitzsimons and several colleagues have been studying the psychology of consumers ? why they buy what they buy ? for years, and they thought they were building on a firm foundation when they recruited 167 undergraduates for an experiment. Their previous research, as well as work by others, seemed to make it clear that if you ask a question involving a positive activity, it will lead to an increase in that activity. Ask a question about a negative activity, like illegal drug use, and it should lead to a decrease in that activity.

Many studies had confirmed that pattern of negative vs positive.

So when Patti Williams of the University of Pennsylvania, Lauren Block of Baruch College in New York, and Fitzsimons set out on their latest project, they weren’t expecting any surprises.
…
One group was asked a positive question: “How likely are you to exercise in the next two months?”

The other group was asked a question that was expected to be viewed as negative, or perhaps even anti-social: “How likely are you to use any illegal drugs in the next two months?”
…
According to a significant body of research, students asked about exercise (a positive activity) should have reported two months later that they had increased their level of exercise, and they did just that.

And students asked about illegal drug use (a negative activity) should have reported a decrease in use. But that didn’t happen. Students asked about drugs actually reported an increase in the use of drugs.
…
They did additional studies on various vices, and found similar results.
…
“We thought that when we asked the question about exercising and using drugs that these were positive and negative examples of health behavior,” Fitzsimons says. “But what we didn’t realize is that certain folks have a more complicated view of drugs. They may report that drugs aren’t good, that they are bad things, but deep down at a gut level they have a positive attitude toward engaging in the use of drugs.

“It was a very different result because we had inadvertently tapped into this gut level positive attitude.”

They viewed drugs positively, Fitzsimons notes, or they wouldn’t have been using them. So, simply asking the question stimulated the use of more drugs.
…