Page 65 - The Power to Change Anything

54 INFLUENCER

attempt to encourage people to improve their lives by learning
how to read and write had failed to produce more than a hand-
ful of interested people. Sabido changed that in a matter of
weeks by creating a TV show that used protagonists to teach
viewers important social lessons—not through speeches, but by
living out their lives in front of everyone.
As you will recall, Sabido (a fervent student of Bandura)
created a five-day-a-week soap opera called Ven Conmigo
(“Come with Me”). At one point, a protagonist struggled over
daily problems that largely stemmed from his inability to read
and write. Eventually several of the characters decided to visit
the country’s adult education headquarters where they’d receive
free adult literacy materials. To everyone’s surprise, the next day
over a quarter of a million people poured into the streets of
Mexico City trying to get their own literacy booklets.
How did something as artificial as a TV soap opera yield
such profound results? It created that all-important vicarious
experience. When programs are presented as realistic stories
dealing with real-life issues, viewers lower their defenses and
allow the program to work on their thoughts in much the same
way as they might experience the world for themselves. But this
still left an important question unanswered. Was the vicarious
modeling actually causing the changes?
To test the impact of vicarious models on human behav-
ior, change advocate David Poindexter worked with Martha
Swai, the program manager for Radio Tanzania, to transport
serial dramas to Tanzania. There a local version of a radio play
(not enough TVs in the area) was aired to certain parts of the
population, but not others. By dividing the populace into
experimental and control groups, researchers would be able to
test the actual impact on such modeled behaviors as spousal
abuse, family planning, and safe sex.
In 1993 when the show Twende na Wakati (“Let’s Go with
the Times”) first aired, Swai and the producers chose to address
HIV/AIDS transmission. This wasn’t going to be easy because