When humans hears a long, laundry list of things, they tend to tune it out. The result?
- If you list a dozen possible serious side effects of a drug, people will be concerned.
- If you list a dozen possible serious side effects mixed in with a dozen minor side effects, people will be less concerned.
- Even if you emphasize the serious ones in larger, bolded red print, people will apparently mentally sum it up as “It side effects,” and be less concerned.
- (And, I suspect, if you rattle off three dozen side effects as fast as you can in a lower town of voice in the middle of the commercial, it has even less effect.)
I’m pretty sure the pharmaceutical companies are aware of this.
Whoops: Drug ads gloss over risks with a mind trick—that’s backed by the FDA
Drug makers are supposed to be forthcoming with health risks—and the more the better.
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possiblesideeffectsincludelossofscalpandpenis
And then there's the side effect that catches people's attention and causes them to ignore everything else – specifically, the side effect that lasts longer than four hours.
Why don't they have side effects like x-ray vision or telepathy or invisibility?
+Chris Kim A For the same reason that most radiation-induced "mutations" turn out to actually be lethal, not super-powers. 🙂