Two ISU researchers hope to save people from wrinkles and age spots by opening their eyes to the severity of skin damage caused by tanning.

During the past two years, professors of psychology Rick Gibbons and Meg Gerrard, along with colleagues in San Diego, studied how showing people photographs of themselves taken with a special UV filter can alter their attitudes toward tanning.

Gibbons said it is estimated there will be 28 million tanning booth visits in the United States this year – even though “every major health organization in the U.S . has a policy against tanning booth usage.”

Gibbons said he hoped the results of this study would help people realize tanning “is effective in the short term, but in the long term, it’s going to make you look worse.”

The researchers studied a random sample of students who said they spent some time in the sun or tanning, he said. They were first asked to fill out a questionnaire about their attitudes towards tanning and how vulnerable they felt to UV damage.

Gerrard said the students were assigned to two groups.

Half of the subjects in the first group were shown an informational video about the damaging effects of UV radiation. All the participants in this group were then photographed twice – once with regular black and white film and once with the special UV filter.

The subjects in the first group were each shown both of their pictures side by side and allowed to compare them.

“[The UV filter] produces a photograph that has basically dark splotches or botches wherever there is UV damage,” Gibbons said.

Half of the subjects in the second group were also shown the informational video. However, none of the participants were shown UV filtered photographs of themselves, Gerrard said.

After three or four weeks, the subjects were asked to complete another questionnaire about their attitudes toward tanning and sun damage. Gibbons said the effect of the UV filter photograph was fairly pronounced – those who saw the UV filter photograph were significantly less likely to have used a tanning booth in the three or four weeks after seeing the picture.

Matt Tobelmann, junior in chemical engineering, said he doesn’t worry about the dangers associated with catching too many rays. But he said seeing a photograph of his skin damage would prompt him to be more careful in the sun.

The study was done twice, Gibbons said, once in each of the last two spring semesters, when tanning is most popular. In the first study, 34 males and 36 females participated. The second study included 62 males and 72 females. The trials were submitted together to the Journal of Health Psychology and should be published early next year.

“It’s making the dangers personal to them that’s the key,” Gerrard said.

The researchers hope to conduct further UV damage studies next summer on Iowa Department of Transportation workers who spend long days working in the sun.