In addition to being a source of entertainment or information or companionship, a radio station is a community.<\/p>\n
If lots of people want to be identified as members of your community, that’s a good thing for your station.<\/p>\n
Not everyone who ever listens to your radio station, however, feels like a member of your community.<\/p>\n
Even being a regular, faithful listener isn’t necessarily enough to make someone a member of your community.<\/p>\n
In personality testing \u2014 for example, the long-established MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) \u2014 researchers long have been aware of the danger of a test taker’s results being skewed by the individual’s desire not to “look bad” to…well, to the computer that scores the results.<\/p>\n
For example, one of the “yes\/no” questions is, “At times I feel like smashing things.” <\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps that’s true for the person taking the test, but that person doesn’t want to be seen as having violent tendencies. So the test subject deliberately misreports his feelings, urges or behaviors.<\/p>\n That testing trap is called “Social Desirability.” That person doesn’t want to be identified with the group of people labelled “violent tendencies,” so he disavows any association with “those people.”<\/p>\n So what?<\/p>\n Originally I planned to play a radio commercial for you to point out that, if I guess correctly, violates Federal Trade Commission regulations.<\/p>\n My “guess” \u2014 and I’m willing to back it up with a large wager \u2014 is that “Jane” isn’t real. It’s someone who is being paid to read a commercial script, not someone who lost 25 pounds in four weeks as a result of patronizing the “medical spa.”<\/p>\n If I’m right, then Millennium Medical Spa had better hope their advertising doesn’t come to the attention of the FTC.<\/p>\n If Jane is<\/strong> a real patient success story, then it’s simply a poor commercial. Making reality sound fake really isn’t a smart strategy.<\/p>\n But as the radio commercial came to an end, another began. And my jaw dropped.<\/p>\n Give it a listen. How many people do you know who gladly would want to be identified as a member of this<\/strong> music radio station’s apparent community?<\/p>\n