After October 22 next year, if you want to buy a pack of smokes in the U.S., you’ll have to put up with some pretty distasteful images on the packing. You may, for example, see a smoke-ravaged lung, the corpse of someone who died from smoking, or an image like the one at left. These will be coupled with in-your-face copy like, “Smoking can kill you.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has implemented the requirement, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, “to encourage smokers to quit and prevent children from smoking.”

The goal is admirable. (In case you’re wondering, I’m an ex-smoker who hasn’t had a cigarette in 20 years.) As Sebilius says, “The images are “frank, honest and powerful depictions of the health risks of smoking, and they will help.”

Unfortunately, they won’t help. They may even be counterproductive.

Similar images already appear on cigarette packages in other parts of the world, like the UK and Australia. Martin Lindstrom wanted to find out if they made a difference, so he used brain scans to find out.

Lindstrom—author of the fascinating book “Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy”—has been fixated on how we make purchase decisions. In the book, he discusses the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) on 2,000 test subjects from five different countries in order to get past what people say and discover how they really react to advertising and marketing.

When the test subjects were asked whether these horrifying images had the desired effect—making you want to quick smoking—most said they did. Then Lindstrom and his research team hooked the subjects up to the medical imaging equipment and showed them the same packages. The resulting images revealed that seeing the pictures on the cigarette labels actually activated the brain’s “craving spots.” The warnings didn’t make people want to quit. They made people want to smoke more.

Speaking at the opening general session of the IABC World Conference last week, keynote speaker Jonah Lehrer—another author fascinated by why we make the choices we do (he wrote “How We Decide”)—talked about how quickly we can get accustomed to things that may cause an initial reaction. Even if those images do inspire people to quit (and Lindstrom’s research suggests otherwise), after four or five packs, smokers will just get used to them and not give them another thought.

Of course, slapping gross images on labels is a tangible way for Sectretary Sebelius to argue that the administration is taking steps to reduce smoking in America. Actually having an impact, however, would require a lot more work that would be harder to demonstrate at a press conference. B.J. Fogg—who spoke at the IABC Research Foundation lunch last week—talked about the three components required to influence a habit: a trigger, the ability and the motivation.

If HHS really wanted people to quit, they’d find a way to give people the trigger and make it easier to take the actual step. Fogg used dental flossing as his example, noting that if you commit to flossing one tooth (ability) after brushing your teeth (the trigger), it gets easier and easier to floss more and more teeth until you’re flossing them all. Could the same technique apply to smoking? If, for instance, you always light up after a meal, you can commit to not lighting up after lunch, reducing your cigarette consumption by one. After that, though, it should be easier to reduce by two, then three, and so on, because (as Fogg said) doing more of something you’re already doing is easier than adopting a completely new habit.

Gameification could work here, too. Would more people quit if they could redeem points for cash or prizes for every step they complete?

In any case, I expect the corpse and lung images on cigarette packages won’t have any effect at all. It’s too bad HHS is taking the easy way rather than making the investment in producing a campaign that might actually achieve the program’s objectives.