Assessing the Effects of Adding Messages to Warning Labels

Abstract

Within the context of a realistic task (setting up an office space), 84 subjects used a two-drawer file cabinet that displayed a warning label with different numbers of statements—one, three or five. In each of these labels, a target statement, indicating that the bottom drawer was to be filled before the top one to avoid tipping, appeared first in the list. One additional warning label condition had three statements with the target statement appearing last. The warning label was affixed to the file cabinet in such a way that subjects had to interact with and remove it in order to fill the file drawer(s). Results demonstrated that almost all of the subjects noticed the label, but very few read or complied with the target warning statement regardless of its location within the list (first or last) or the number of total items on the label (one, three or five).

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Breznitz

(1984). Cry Wolf: The Psychology of False Alarms, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Dorris

A. L.

(1991). Product warnings in theory and practice: Some questions answered and some answers questioned. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 35th Annual Meeting, (pp. 1073–1077). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.

Driver

R. W.

(1987). A communication model for determining the appropriateness of on-product warnings. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, PC 30 (3), 157–163.

Edworthy

Adams

(1996). Warning Design: A Research Prospective. Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis.

Frantz

J. P.

Rhoades

T. P.

(1993). A task-analytic approach to the temporal and spatial placement of product warnings. Human Factors, 35, 719–730.

Frantz

J. P.

Rhoades

T. P.

Young

S. L.

Schiller

J. A.

(1999). Potential problems associated with overusing warnings. In Proceedings of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society—43rd Annual Meeting Santa Monica, CA: The Human Factors & Ergonomics Society.

Friedmann

(1988). The effect of adding symbols to written warning labels on user behavior and recall. Human Factors, 30 (4), 507–515.

Hall

(1986). The Failure to Warn Handbook. Columbia, md: Hanrow Press.

McGrath

J. M.

Downs

C. W.

(1992, October). The effectiveness of on-product warning labels: A communication perspective. For the Defense, 19–24.

10.

Otsubo

S. M.

(1988). A behavioral study of warning labels for consumer products: Perceived danger and use of pictographs. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting (pp. 536–540). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.

11.

Purswell

J. L.

Krenek

R. F.

Dorris

(1987). Warning effectiveness: What do we know? In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 31st Annual Meeting (pp. 1116–1120). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.

12.

Rothstein

P. R.

(1985). Designing warnings to be read and remembered. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 29th Annual Meeting (pp. 684–688). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.

13.

Stewart

D. W.

Martin

I. M.

(1994). Intended and unintended consequences of warning messages: A review and synthesis of empirical research. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 13 (1), 1–19.