Page 166 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

158 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

individuals toward choices that, in sum, would lead to desired social
change. Webb (2012) notes that individual cost-benefit calculations—
for example, the hedonic calculus of the “rational man” or “rational
actor,” whereby individuals seek to maximize pleasure and minimize
pain—are not timeless or universal, but make sense only in relation to
particular configurations of societal expectations and structures. From the
social or sociological perspective, then, one would need to take into ac-
count the zeitgeist—the prevailing conditions of a society in terms of its
culture, economic structure, political and ideological infrastructures, and
so forth—and see how it works to shape individual personality and
identity.
Public health is, of course, shot through with psychological notions of
well-being, even as it operates at the collective or population level. The
public health approach includes “both the art and the science of prevent-
ing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health” (Weisheit & Klofas,
1998, p. 198). For example, since violence and aggression cause or lead to
injuries and death, proponents of the public health model are apt to treat
violence as if it were a disease with identifiable stages: etiology or onset,
developmental pathways of the “disease” after onset, characteristics of the
population “at risk” for “contracting” the disease, and interventions at the
individual or group level that purport to reduce or eliminate the disease of
violence.
From the public health perspective, both the earlier models of punish-
ment and rehabilitation (or treatment) were reactive in that they dealt with
criminals or clients only after their offending or problematic behavior
came to light or was “diagnosed.” Although public health proponents ac-
knowledge that interventions aimed at rehabilitating defendants or clients
who have already offended is an improvement over the criminal justice
emphasis on punishment for the sake of deterrence, retribution, or justice,
the treatment model does not go far enough. Rather than intervention, the
public health model’s primary objective is prevention, that is, ensuring
that the disease never arises in the first place (see Guetzloe, 1992;
McMahon, 2000).
Proponents of public health argue that whatever problems are being
faced—whether violence, climate change, smoking, gambling, or obesity,
to name a few—they are not simply social problems; they are public health
problems. It is important to make whatever persuasive appeals are neces-
sary to sell the notion that something is a public health problem because of
the higher levels of invasiveness and surveillance of the population that are
implied in the public health model as compared to other models of justice
or treatment. Indeed, Deborah Prothrow-Stith (1993, p. 138) suggests that