Well, there's a psychological finding that goes a little way toward explaining why this campaign hasn't been effective. "Fear campaigns" rarely work. Similar campaigns have been just as ineffective against automobile accidents, H-bomb testing, and inadequate protection from radioactive fallout.

FIRST YOU TRY TO FIND "SOME OTHER REASON"

The characteristic reaction to any "scare" or "threat" is immediate fear. If the threat can be readily and easily dealt with, then it's disposed of and the fear vanishes.

However, if there seems to be a possibility of failure in dealing with the threat, or if any action in coping with it or any reaction to it will cause discomfort or displeasure, intense feelings of mental anxiety and tension result. To avoid this, the individual deals with his fear through a process that involves rationalizing away its importance. He downgrades it. He classifies it as insignificant, and ignores it.

The American Automobile Association has made numerous attempts to publicize the need for safety belts in cars. They claim that 5,000 lives a year could be saved, and at least a third of all serious injuries eliminated, through the use of seat belts.

But drivers still believe that "accidents only happen to the other fellow." I wondered, when I varied between desperate attempts to stop smoking and renewed puffing away of ever-increasing numbers of cigarettes each day, just how come I was acting in such ostrich-like fashion. Searching for an answer, I spoke with several friends. First I went to a clear-headed acquaintance who's a minister.

"People shut their eyes," he said, "and hope that the bogeyman will go away. I have a niece named Suzi," he continued. "She's a charming little three-year-old, and when Suzi doesn't like something she has her own way of handling the problem. She simply clamps her eyes shut; she expects that if she doesn't see it, it's not there. Or that by the time she opens her eyes, it will have gone away."

I'm not exactly a charming three-year-old, but I must admit that on occasion my logic had been on a par with Suzi's. For example, when I saw in a news report that the death-rate for heavy smokers is four times greater (from all causes) than it is for non-smokers, I reacted by lighting a cigarette. Psychologically, I suppose, I was saying to myself: "Jack, do you believe that statistic? What? You do? Well, buddy, don't. Forget it. You just go ahead and light up. There —you didn't topple over, did you? Forget it, Jack. . .. re-lax!"

My minister friend insists that many of us continue to smoke because we're secretly afraid that some damage has already been done to our bodies, and that stopping now wouldn't do any good.* But so long as we continue to smoke, then every puff (just as long as we can puff) denies our worries. We're like the poor fellow who shouts "You can't do this to me!" all the way to the death-house. He continues fervently to believe it until the current goes zzzzzzzzzz.

WE'D RATHER SMOKE THAN FAIL IN THE EFFORT TO STOP

The next man with whom I spoke happened to be a sports columnist. "I can't speak with authority about others," he said, "but I know that Americans are trained from childhood to want to win. Or, looking at it another way, we hate to lose. And what we hate to lose most of all, I think, is our self-respect.

"Now look at a typical girl in an office. Annie decides that she's smoking too much—her fingers and teeth are tattle-tale yellow, and her purse has got a layer of tobacco shreds at its bottom. She announces her big decision. She tells her family and friends and her co-workers. She sets a date and a time. She throws away any extra packs of cigarettes she has in her desk, or she gives them to the boys in the mail-room. And then Annie does it. She actually stops smoking.

"But," my friend continued, "it only lasts for a while. She starts to smoke again. Her friends tease her. And she herself is disturbed by her failure. Where's her will power? Her moral strength? Down goes Annie's self-respect.
The reverse is the truth, as we'll see.
 
"So, because she just doesn't want to lose that self-respect, up she comes with an interesting excuse. Annie explains that she did, after all, succeed in stopping for a few days. Long enough to prove to herself that she could stop any time she wanted to if she was really, underline really, determined to stop. And having proved that to herself, it was okay to start smoking again.

"In short, Annie is more frightened of the fact that she may flop in her efforts to stop smoking than she is of the effects of continued smoking."
Here, too, I could recognize myself. It is a blow to one's ego to fail, again and again, at something that seems so simple.
I then discussed the matter with a professor of education. "Easy enough to understand," he said. "Every teacher knows it. People remember what they want to remember. They forget what they do not want to remember. Oh—and they remember what surprises them."

"Sorry," I said, "but you've lost me."
"I'll give you an example," he answered. "Two young people meet and fall in love. When you're courting, it's important to remember little things. What's more, you want to remember them. So they remember everything—the first day they met, the first time they dined together, their first dance, their first kiss, the weather on the day he proposed. For a woman, this is the most exciting, romantic time of her life. She wants to remember it. She always does. For the man, it's done and over. It was kid stuff. He's anxious to forget what he thinks of as hooey.’ Five years later, he doesn't even remember their anniversary date."