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Ethical Issues of Social Marketing and Persuasion 193

appeals that create excessive anxiety to promote social marketing goals
would not be acceptable, even if those appeals are effective at prompting
people to adopt the desired behaviors. Likewise, the Georgia anti-obesity
campaign that perpetuated a harmful stereotype of overweight children
could not be justified even if it motivated the majority of children, who are
not obese, to avoid overeating.

A corollary theory to duty-based ethics is rights-based ethics. These two
approaches may be likened to two sides of the same coin: Every right has
a correlative duty. For example, the right to free speech is accompanied by
a duty to allow others to express their opinions, even if they are antitheti-
cal to what one believes. Moral rights are justifiable claims or entitlements.
The United States is considered by many to be a society based on moral
rights; the reference to the rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness” is a key phrase in the Declaration of Independence, and the
first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution are known as the Bill of
Rights.
In the social marketing world, rights are often invoked as a rationale for
certain actions. For example, many people hold the belief that Americans
have the right to education or health care, and this belief drives both gov-
ernmental and nonprofit administrators and their social marketing efforts.
In recent years, a troubling trend has been the argument by some for
“duty-less rights.” This means, for example, that an individual can express
an opinion on gun control or the right to bear arms without accepting the
duty to listen to the opposing point of view (Selbourne, 1994). Because
social marketers so often deal with issues that are based on rights, they
must understand and apply theories related to both rights and duties
simultaneously.

Social Contract Theory

Social contract theory (SCT) is based on the most fundamental considera-
tions for maintaining social order and harmony. Its premise is that people
must generally agree to abstain from exploiting one another, and to ensure
that this does not occur, rules and mechanisms to enforce cooperation
are required. SCT assumes that a hypothetical social contract exists
that encompasses actual ethical standards that permit individuals and
groups to interact in mutually supportive, or at least benign, ways. In other
words, it assumes that social marketers both desire and expect there to be
basic ethical rules to govern their transactions. According to SCT, social
marketers envision global humanity coming together to work out a