Unless you have been living under a rock, you have watched Netflix’s The Polygamist or come across it.

Entertainment changes behaviour through mechanisms we understand well. Narrative persuasion lowers cognitive defences, so ideas enter without the resistance a health message would trigger. Identification maps audiences onto characters. Modelling means we learn vicariously from watching consequences play out on someone else. Emotional arousal cements the storyline in memory.

But nobody fact-checks while being entertained. These mechanisms work exactly as well for a false belief as a true one.

Which means a show with this reach is part of the HIV response.

I have scored it against the four beliefs that drive enacted HIV stigma. I have also identified a fifth driver the show introduces that nobody is discussing, and it is critical to how we understand health-seeking behaviour.

The full analysis, and three things our sector should do the next time a series like this comes around is in this month’s Applied Insights.

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