The Angelina Jolie Effect

Although the announcement DID create awareness, it has failed to effectively transmit factual information about 

breast cancer. 

Researchers conducted a survey of over 2,500 women and men, and discovered that an astonishing 3:4 people knew of Jolie’s brave story. However, sadly, less than 10% of the surveyed demographic could correctly answer questions about the BRCA gene mutation that Jolie was inflicted with and has adamantly spoken about. 

In fact, the general public seems far more enthralled with implications that this could cause within Jolie’s career, as opposed to the medical implications that this could have on Jolie herself, as well as the medical field as a whole. 

This kind of ‘selective attention’ in regards to the public’s retention of PSA’s is not new; this has been a considerable contributing factor to the public’s general ignorance of important local, global, political, medical, and religious agendas. The public is generally so much more concerned with pop culture, gossip, and menial problems in OTHER people’s lives, that we have lost our interest in real world issues that could actually affect us, such as the implications of the BRCA gene mutation within breast cancer victims.

Moral of the story: don’t be brainwashed by the distracting tittle-tattle of reality television and social media. The real world is OUTSIDE of these suffocating modern phenomenons; the trick is to escape the initial hold that these drowning anomalies have on us. 

Sources: Scientific American