BY JESSICA PADDEN
The research article that I chose to review is Influence of Warning Label Signal Words on Perceived Hazard Level. This article discussed the experiment that was done to gather data on the influence that warning and signal words have on the perceived hazard of certain consumer products. The signal words that were compared in this study were LETHAL, DANGER, WARNING, CAUTION and NOTE. These five words were presented on the actual labels of products such as paint thinner, plant food, fabric protector, facial tissue and toothpaste. The researchers used actual product labels to create a more realistic environment, due to the fact that this experiment was under disguise as a marketing research study.
It was expected to be found that, 1) products without a front warning label would be perceived as less hazardous than those products that did, 2) products with labels that did not contain a signal word would be perceived as less hazardous than those that did contain a signal word warning label, 3) labels with the signal NOTE would be perceived as the least hazardous, 4) labels with the terms WARNING and CAUTION would not contain a difference but would be perceives as less hazardous than the labels with the signal word DANGER, 5) labels with the signal word LETHAL would be perceived to be the greatest hazard. One hundred and thirty five people participated in this questionnaire, which only contained one question out of six that regarded the level of hazard a product was perceived to have. This was the only question that was of particular interest to the researchers.
The results of this study showed that the presence of signal words on product labels raised hazard perceptions. The signal words that are most popular among design standards and guidelines, CAUTION, WARNING, and DANGER, showed no significant perceived difference when compared to each other. However, the extreme words such as NOTE and DANGER, did show significant perceived differences. Thus, the majority of the hypothesis presented by this experimenters was supported. This study went on to show that labels lacking any type of warning label were perceived to be even more hazardous than those products that did have a label. This suggested that products with no labels raised uncertainty in consumers about the products actual degree of hazard.
This experiment continued to show how signal words can change peoples perceptions of product hazards. Considering the fact that this study had good external and face validity, it can be said that perceptions can be altered by several signal words used on current day warning labels.
REFERENCE
Jarrard, S. M., Simpson, S. W., and Wogalter, M. S. (1994). Influence of warning label words on perceived hazard level. Human factors, 36(3), 547-556.