Seounmi Youn

Restricting Gambling Advertising and the Third-Person Effect

Along with the rapid growth experienced by the gaming industry in the United States has come increasing calls to restrict or ban gambling advertising. To date, little is known about what motivates people to support such restrictions on advertising. However, one recent theory, the third-person effect, offers a possible explanation. The third-person effect states that when confronted with negative messages, people will overestimate the messages’ effect on others relative to themselves. Additionally, it suggests that it is this misperception that motivates them to take action against such messages. This study investigates whether a third-person effect occurs for gambling advertising and if this effect is related to procensorship attitudes for lotteries and casinos. The results suggest there is a sizable gap between perceptions of the effect of gambling advertising on one’s self versus others, and that the perceived effect on others is related to a willingness to restrict such advertising. 2000 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Profiling Healthy Eating Consumers: A Psychographic Approach to Social Marketing

This paper explores the profile of healthy and unhealthy eating consumers in terms of attitudinal variables and personality traits. Data from 3,462 respondents to the 1997 DDB Needham Life Style Study were analyzed. The results show the healthy eaters to be environmentally conscious, socially conservative, and financially healthy. They are usually high self-monitors, and innovative. On the other hand, unhealthy eaters are typically insensitive to their environment and health. They are also low self-monitors and hold liberal attitudes toward sexual issues. Practical and social implications are discussed for social marketers regarding target segmentation and message design.

Exploring the Traits of Happy People

This paper explores self-reported happiness across afourfold personality framework that synthesizespsychoanalytic and psychometric approaches topersonality structure. Using survey data from arepresentative sample of the U.S. adult population, weidentified four personality types rooted in two basicdimensions – Extraversion/Introversion andTendermindedness/Toughmindedness. On a general level,we found that Extraverts were happier than Introverts,and Tendermindeds were happier than Toughmindeds. More specifically, we identified patterns ofsimilarities and differences across personality typesin the meaning of happiness with respect to goodeating habits, financial insecurity, anxiety andtension, financial optimism, and health concerns.