“The results were clear: While higher depression scores were generally linked with lower intentions to seek help from a romantic partner, a close friend, or family members among participants who received the direct message, there was no such relationship for the participants who received a mistargeted message.
According to the researchers, these findings indicate that the mistargeted message was more effective at promoting help-seeking than the direct message was. And a second online study confirmed this pattern of results.” [bold added]
–“Mistargeted Messages Could Spur Help-Seeking for Depression” via Association for Psychological Science’s blog, Observations
And here’s another example of oblique messages better achieving their goal:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/02/23/you-can-change-the-minds-of-climate-change-skeptics-heres-how/
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