Beauty, Brains and the Bronze: Why We Tan

In this episode, we talk about the psychology of tanning. I’m joined by Sherry Pogato, a licensed clinical psychologist, professor, and social media researcher at the University of Connecticut, to break down why indoor tanning and outdoor sunbathing can feel so rewarding – and why melanoma risk warnings barely register. We get into the real drivers: appearance motivation, social rewards, stress relief, and the immediate “feel good” effects people report after UV exposure.

We also zoom out to tanning culture and access. As laws restrict minors in tanning salons, tanning beds don’t just vanish, they pop up in gyms, off-campus student apartments, and even through systems that let students pay with campus cash cards, creating mixed messages about safety. Sherry shares research showing how simple policy changes can reduce availability, and why “make it less easy to tan” can be more effective than another poster full of statistics.

Then we tackle the modern accelerant: social media. From the “natural glow” health halo to TikTok’s visual economy and the rise of "tanmaxing," UV exposure is getting repackaged as wellness and aesthetics. Sherry also explains a promising sun safety intervention that flips the script by recruiting tanners to create and share healthy skin content, shifting behavior through cognitive dissonance instead of preaching. If you care about sun safety, skin cancer prevention, sunscreen habits, or how to change health behavior in a world of algorithms, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves a tan, and leave a review with your biggest question about tanning and UV risk.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Dermot Trotter Don't Swear About Skin Care Podcast. On today's show, I have Sherry Pogato, a licensed clinical psychologist, professor, and social media researcher. She is currently a professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut, and she's director of the Yukon Center for M Health and Social Media. Welcome to the show. It's great to have you here, Sherry. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Well, I think people might be wondering, you know, why are we having a clinical psychologist on here? Well, there's a lot of psychology and

Why A Psychologist Studies Tanning

SPEAKER_00 0:35

dermatology, as we know. And the area of expertise that I wanted to tackle with you that you've made part of your work and life passion is tanning. So I wanted to talk more about how you got involved, you know, with tanning indoor, outdoor, and sun safety and what kind of brought you to make this a big part of your career.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yeah, that's a great question because you wouldn't normally think of a psychologist as doing tanning research. But I will confess right off the bat, I was an indoor tanner as a teenager, as a young person, and a sunbather. And I ended up going to graduate school for clinical psychology. And I was very interested in the intersection between psychology and health. And so that's an area called health psychology. And as I was learning more about the space, I realized there's this area called skin cancer prevention that was sort of all on sort of the behavior behind how we develop skin cancer. So sun safety, tanning, et cetera, all these behaviors that we do that can increase our risk. And as I was learning about this literature, I realized that I had engaged in many of the behaviors that increase your risk for skin cancer. And so my alarm bells went off. I uh now I'm in my 20s and I'm more concerned about premature aging and things like that. And so I was no longer a tanner, especially as I was getting into that literature. And I felt like I could have something to offer this area of literature because I felt like it was in the head of a tanner, having been a tanner for many years and seeing in the literature how there was so much focus on health messages. And in my head, I'm thinking that's not gonna work because when I was a tanner in my teens, in my early 20s, you could tell me all day long someday I might get skin cancer. And it wasn't landing because what I was motivated by was how tanning made me look, or at least how I felt it made me look. I felt like it made me look better. I got compliments from my friends, I got more attention from boys, and that mattered to me more than this sort of diffuse idea that some day down the road I might develop a skin cancer. I couldn't really wrap my head around that. And so as I'm seeing this literature really focused on public health messages and that sort of thing, I thought, you know, I wonder if we need to take a different approach and think more about what's motivating the tanner. And so I started to kind of do some research along those lines of this idea of appearance motivation. We do a lot of things because we want to improve our physical appearance. And some of those things are healthy and some of those things are unhealthy. And so why do we make those decisions? And what can we do for young people who don't tend to think that much about long-term health consequences as much as middle-aged or older

The Real Payoff Behind Tanning

SPEAKER_01 3:30

people do? So, what sort of messaging could help? Maybe we need to get out of the box of health messaging and maybe come up with appearance-based messages. Or maybe we need to sort of, if you can't beat them, join them and think about whether there are substitutes we can offer them to enhance their physical appearance that would not come with the risks of tanning. So that's kind of where my thought process was. And so my doctoral dissertation was actually a skin cancer prevention study. So I might be the only uh clinical psychologist who has a dissertation on skin cancer prevention. And uh, a little joke my advisor always says whenever he talks about me is I'm the only graduate student who did her dissertation on the beach because we actually went to the beach to do my dissertation.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Hey, that's a great way to do a dissertation, though. The beach is fantastic. Just with your sunscreen under the umbrella.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, we lugged all of our equipment out there and we met tanners where they were quite literally.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

But I think it's fascinating what you talk about because definitely the behavioral aspect is the most challenging thing in any area of medicine that I think we try to change for our patients, right? We talk to them about other lifestyle things that they might do if somebody smokes and we want them to stop smoking. How challenging, you know, is that when, you know, yes, maybe just giving the health message, oh, you might get lung cancer. Well, no, a lot of people in their mindset, like you said, that's kind of off, you know, in the future. Oh, that won't happen to me. And especially I think when we're younger, we all can tend to have that mindset. And I think the why behind why we all do what we do is so important. I remember asking one of the moms that came in, she was tanning regularly, sometimes two, three times a week. She even joked at times she thought she could be addicted to tanning. And I said, Well, when you go, like, what do you really feel like? What's the reason? She said, honestly, it's 20 minutes, no husband, no kids. And she said to me, it's meditative, it's warm, it's quiet. And yeah, she did appreciate some of the physical beauty. She felt she looked better, but she honestly was getting that alone time that she desperately craved. And so I convinced her to try to trade that in for maybe a coffee at Starbucks and reading a book. And we could talk about caffeine and you know the challenges with that. But I told her the lesser veatles, I'm okay with. And we actually got her to switch that out. And that why really motivated her to change. And I think that is a hard part to talk with patients about and sometimes figure out what is

Tanning Beds Beyond The Salon

SPEAKER_00 5:50

the right messaging to kind of convince them, even though it's the health issues that we're most concerned with too. But the why is so important. You know, I want to talk about the study you published back in 2015, because this is one that I remember coming back to and people talking about and really wanting to know more about the tanning industry and tanning bed behaviors and people that had them in the homes versus the gyms and what they were doing. So I want you to kind of touch upon some of the highlights from that and what that really taught us about tanning culture.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Yeah, so we've done a lot of research looking at where tanning beds are. So obviously, tanning salons are where lots of tanning beds are and have been historically. Although there's been legislation in the last decade or more on uh tanning salons and uh use miners' use of tanning salons. And there's been a lot of advances in legislation and policy around that, where I think something like 22 states now fully ban miners from tanning beds. And um something like 44 states have at least partial bans. So that all great news, and that has affected the use of tanning salons. But what we were noticing is that the tanners we were interviewing were going other places. They said, Oh, well, I tan at the gym, I tan at school. And we thought, my goodness, are people tanning on college campuses? And so we started studying this and we found out that yes, indeed, they are tanning on college campuses. And in fact, some camp, some colleges actually had tanning beds on campus, and many of them had tanning beds in off-campus apartments. So these beautiful, like luxury apartments that college students live in that offer pools and all kinds of amenities, would often have tanning salon, tanning booths and tanning beds. Um, and then we also discovered that about 14% of universities, we looked at 125 of US MOOCs and World Report top universities, 14% of them allowed students to use their campus cash cards to pay for tanning locally, off campus. And so we were realizing like, so we're making really great headway in tanning salons, but what's not being policed or what's totally flying on under the radar are tanning beds in these other locations. And so one little intervention we did is the the universities that offered their cash cards to be used for tanning salons, we literally just wrote them a letter and said, Hey, I don't, you know, I'm not sure if you're aware of this. We we wrote the letter to leadership and said, uh this is happening on your university campus. There's a tort liability risk to funding indoor tanning for your students given the risks to melanoma. And we shared the statistics. And we actually found that something like 65% of them uh canceled the ability for their campus cards to pay for some for tanning off campus or anywhere. And so it's probably my most effective intervention. Yeah, it was writing a letter, which normally we have to do a lot more than that. But uh, but these but what we realized is like a lot leadership most of the time wasn't even aware that this was happening. It was kind of happening at these other levels. And so the approach here was we need to make tanning less available. And we're seeing that happening with tanning salons. A lot of tanning salons are actually starting to shift uh towards sunless tanning and offering other types of products and away from the UV tanning. But to the extent that tanning beds are in the all these other places, some people even buy them and have them in their homes. Um, this so then, you know, it's like kind of one step forward, one step back. If the if tanning beds are kind of ending up in these other locations, they're still in gyms, particularly like there's one gym chain. I don't know if you want me to mention it, but uh planet fitness, I'm gonna just say like they continue to offer tanning beds. And uh we did send letters after we uh studied the gyms, and we sent letters to leadership at these gym chains. And uh some some of the chains did reduce how many of their franchises offer tanning beds. Well, we haven't seen like a lot of progress on Planet Fitness as of yet, though.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Well, maybe after this podcast we can talk with him and see. We'll give you some motivation too.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

All kinds of release we get shopper, our our gym goers, gym is healthy and so lay it. Let's keep it healthy.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah, you're right. I think it gives mixed messaging, right? Like you go to the gym to work out, to get fit, to improve your physique, obviously, maybe look better, feel better, but your overall health. And so you think of tannings there, kind of sends some mixed messages that tanning is safe as well. Just like I think you mentioned with the college campuses, the fact that they could go and use their cards, it's sort of like a subliminal almost endorsement, kind of in my opinion. You know, obviously that if, okay, it's okay to use the card for things like this, then obviously the college must endorse it. They feel like it's safe, it's appropriate. You know, they wouldn't let me do this if potentially there was harm, right? I could see kind of the logic that people would sort of infer. And I can see that from the gym, from the card standpoint. And

Policy Levers That Actually Work

SPEAKER_00 10:55

I think that's where the psychology is so interesting about this and talking about, you know, as humans, when we clearly know something has risk to it, you know, why do we still choose? Like, what is the mindset that kind of motivates us to still do these things that potentially have risk and we are aware of it, or maybe we do ignore it and things are just more important. I

Why Long Term Risks Don’t Land

SPEAKER_00 11:15

don't know if you could touch upon that or explain that because I think that's so fascinating for us to understand in general for healthcare, especially as we're trying to battle these messages.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yeah, I think the hard thing about prevention is that it requires you to have a message that, you know, emphasizes long-term risks of something. And as humans, we're very motivated by immediate consequences. So you always want to look at what is the person getting out of it? And I love your example of your patient who was getting out of it this peaceful, relaxing oasis of her week. And then you came up with another plan of, okay, I can give you that, but let's do that without, you know, harming your health. And I think that's probably going to be the most effective way to change behavior, is you do have to meet people where they're at in terms of what they want and what motivates them. It's very hard to talk people out of what they want. And so when it comes to tanning, it is oftentimes very physical parents motivated. But to your point, there are a lot of tanners who are getting stress reduction out of it, whether it's laying at the beach or laying in a tanning bed. It's relaxing. And there's actually some interesting research that shows exposure to UV rays can actually stimulate hurt receptors in the brain that make us feel happy. And I think we've all experienced that when you go outside in the sun, you're like, oh, this is so wonderful. So, so there is something going on neurobiologically biologically there. So it's really hard to compete with that by saying, hey, you know, someday, maybe years down the road, this could happen. And, you know, you might get skin cancer or you might not, we don't know. Um, it just when you're weighing kind of the consequences that it doesn't carry the weight often with a lot of people, particularly young people. So when we think about teenagers, their brains aren't even fully developed. And the one part of their brain that's still developing is prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that allows you to sort of weigh long-term consequences. We see teenagers always engaging in risky behavior, right? I have a teenager, I've got a front row seat to it. So anyone, any parents out there with teenagers are like, yes. Um, so it's you can sort of preach to them and tell them things, but you know, their brains are still, you know, developing in a way to where long-term consequences are going to land like those short-term consequences. And so you're gonna kind of be banging your head against the wall if that's if that's your strategy is to emphasize long-term, especially when those long-term consequences aren't for sure. So we can't tell someone you're for sure gonna get skin cancer. So they're kind of like, eh, I'll play the odds, I'll think about it later, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Yeah, because risk is a funny concept, right? Like I think, you know, sometimes you know, there's increased risk. And when it's not absolute, like, ah, like you said, they might take their chances. And we all do that, you know, I think in our everyday lives. So I can see, especially you're trying to motivate a teenager, although I know a lot of adults that maybe that prefrontal cortex is still working its way through, too. Um, that you will see uh not not to name anybody in my family, my brother, I'll have to get on for that. But you know, I just kind of tease a little bit that we kind of debate how we make these decisions and the process we all go through. And I think that's kind of fascinating because that's where we're trying to get to people and how do you motivate them? And I hate to say it, but sometimes I've even shown them pictures of scars, specifically talking about some of my younger patients, because the skin cancer isn't tangible, I think, to them, or the fact that they have to go through something will say, look, this is a patient I had that actually got a melanoma. She tanned when she was in her teens and her 20s, she had a melanoma in her early 30s. And I show them the scar, and it's amazing how aghast they are that that visual sometimes will instill a little bit more motivation. But it, but it's tough. It's a tough situation. And I think that's where a lot of people are going, you know, on our side, we're looking at this younger generation and trying to figure out, you know, especially with Gen Z, and you know, you're an expert in looking at social media and how this impacts, I think, a lot of behaviors. A generation that we kind of think of now that's so focused on health. You know, people talk about how they don't go to the bar so they don't tend to drink, they're looking at prevention, they want to focus on anti-aging. It seems mixed messaging then that somehow tanning is rationalized in their minds. Do you know why or what we think why that's happening? You know, why that mindset has shifted.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah.

Using Images To Change Behavior

SPEAKER_01 15:35

So, well, one thing I wanted to pick up on when you said about the visuals. Yeah. Because I was like nodding my head, is that the re one of the reasons that visual is so powerful is because it's about physical appearance. An ugly scar. So you're really getting at their appearance motivations. And and that's the it's such an important, it's such a strong driver, particularly for women of across the lifespan, but particularly young women. But we actually see this in young men too. So it's it's hard to compete with that. And and so I think that anything that's going to emphasize physical appearance is going to be helpful with that. Um, whether it's showing them a visual. One thing that we did when we went onto the beach is we took those UV cameras. We got an instant UV camera. So these cameras, for those who aren't familiar, will take a picture of your face and it shows premature aging or skin damage that you wouldn't be able to see with the naked eye. So if you've got some damage in there from UV rays, it comes up. And I don't know if you guys ever use this in the office. It's not the best picture of you because you can see stuff that you wouldn't normally see. So we lumped our camera out to the beach, had people pose for pictures and they loved it. They were like, I want to see my picture. And it had a real people had a visceral response to that. Even the folks like you mentioned, we did see some people who were like self-proclaimed tanning addicts, and they looked at that picture and it gave them pause about, oh my goodness, what I'm doing to my skin. Because you, because they couldn't really see much. All they're seeing is the tan. Oh, I love how I look so tan, but they weren't seeing what was below the surface, what was sort of brewing behind that. And and that was very powerful. So I think uh when we're in any ways that we can kind of connect the message to physical appearance, we're gonna see that shift happening.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Yeah, I felt kind of bad using that as the motivator, but at the same time, you know, I agree with you. I think we are so motivated by the physical nature of it. And a scar like that, I think does shock people. I hate to say it, but it brought me back to those high school days. I went to Catholic high school, and I can still remember when we did STD back in the day, education or SDI as we all know it, and they just flashed images. And boy, was that a motivator for a lot of us that were trying to put together the risk of, you know, you know, of unprotected zisks and how they were trying to educate us and then a lot of people laugh at it. But I said it could be powerful, those images. And I can still remember them many years later and how they sort of had an impact on people thinking, like, oh my gosh, like I don't want that happening to me. And as it's kind of funny, people comment on it now. It did have an impact. You could definitely see people talking about it and maybe behaving a little bit differently. But the tanning area, I think is where we're starting to wrap our heads around it with this generation focused on health. Do you do you feel like this messaging

Social Media And The Tanning Loop

SPEAKER_00 18:30

has shifted? Because I see a lot of things on social media where, you know, they're talking about how healthy is or celebrating a sunburn and maybe turning away from tanning beds, doing tanning that way, but now thinking, oh, but outdoor tanning, that that's okay. That's safe.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah, I think there's this idea that the sun is natural. Um, so, and because it's natural, it must be healthy. Um, we also refer to a tan as a natural glow. So this word natural is sort of competing with what we know about UV radiation, which is that it is radiation and it's very harmful. So, yes, it's natural, but it also is a carcinogen. So I think they feel like that's sort of the disconnect there is it's sort of getting this health halo in some ways. And so then people are like, oh, it must be okay, and plus it's this way to relax. And so, so I feel like we've made so much progress when it comes to tanning beds, but with it's with the sun, it does have that aspect to it. That being said, I mean, I know a lot of teenagers who know it's not good for them. And it's not because they they they they they don't necessarily believe like, oh, it's natural, so it's healthy. Um, it is more the case that they're like, I love the way I look and I'm I'm gonna keep doing it. And and social media really amplifies this because you're with social media, you just see more images of peers and what they're doing. So there's a lot more social comparison going on. We've got this whole cadre of influencers now. We used to have celebrity culture, and that's still a thing, but like influencers are sort of more influential, I think, than celebrities. Because think of the most famous celebrity, Taylor Swift. This woman has never had a tan, right? Like you never see her. She's so her skin is flawless. I don't think she's ever had a tan in her life. Um, but that's not who people are paying attention to. They're paying attention to their peers, they're paying attention to these sort of more mid-level influencers. And then that's affecting their behavior. That, you know, the people who are doing, you know, their makeup and showing their their tanning rituals on social media. And so I really feel like social media has been fanning the flames of this idea that tanning is the way to improve your physical appearance. Yeah. And lots of visuals. Actually, one thing I'll add is yeah, um, we took a look at TikTok and we did a search of the top skin cancer-related videos. And the top videos were ones with visuals of skin cancers and things like that. And so uh that it was very interesting that that's getting the most attention on social media, not public health messages or anything like that. Like put up a melanoma, someone, you know, having it surgically removed, that's gonna get tons of eyeballs. Way more than a public health message of, you know, a statistic about how many people are gonna get melanoma. Like that's no one's listening to that. So we've got like two things going on in social media um visually, but I don't know if those worlds are uniting, so where like the young people are looking at melanoma videos. We might need to use the right hashtags to get that into the right eyeballs. But um, but otherwise, it's visuals that are sort of glorifying tanning and showing like how beautiful it is. So, so that's kind of where where we're stuck.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Well, and I think one of the trends.

Tan Maxing And UV Index Misuse

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Too that you've probably seen, and I've had questions about it. People coming into the office is talking about the tan maxing. So I was gonna comment a little bit on that and kind of it kind of goes along with that shift with outdoor tanning and sort of where you see that going, or sort of tied into in the last few minutes we'll have here is touching upon sort of the education around this and trying to really change people's minds about what tanning should mean to them and their risk overall as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah. So tan maxing, this is another kind of product of social media, even just this term. And what it means is it's it's this culture where people want to optimize or maximize how tan they can get. So they look at the UV index to figure out when I should go tanning to get the most bang for my book and um use that to get as tan as possible. And and then they talk about that on social media, and then it kind of becomes like a viral thing where everyone's you know wants to do this too. So obviously that is not the use of UV index we were ever hoping for. And yeah, so but but this is happening and it's getting reinforced. And uh, so this is yeah, I think if we're going to solve the problem, it's gonna have to kind of be on social media because that's where the fuel is being added to the fire. So, to the extent that we can get into social media spaces and start changing the narrative, I think we can start to see some shifting going on. How to do that, the devil is in the details, but I think that's something we need to be thinking more about.

Turning Tanners Into Sun Safety Creators

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Well, maybe I'll have you end then with just telling us a little bit about your national cancer and toot funded study to really talk about this six week sun safety intervention and sort of what's the design or the rationale maybe behind the intervention and what you hope to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yeah, so this is a randomized trial where we we we did some pilot work and found that this there could be some potential to this where um we want to use social media, but in a not in a way where we preach to people, to young people, but rather where we make them the messengers. So in our pilot work, we recruited tanners and we said, Hey, I wondered if you could help with a social media campaign where around healthy skin. And so we have all these different messages. We would love you to be the creators, you make the messages, we'll put them up, you put them up on yours, and we incentivize them to be creators. And they loved it. They were like, sure, we'll do this, and they did it. And so we had them fill out measures before they started and then measures months later to find out did it affect their own behavior at all? And sure enough, it did. They increased their use of skin screen sunscreen, they reduced their tanning. So by having them be the messengers, it really kind of created a cognitive dissonance where their behavior shifted without even having to tell them, hey, you shouldn't be tanning. This is bad for you. Didn't peep, we didn't whisper a word about that. We were just like, hey, we we would love to create this campaign for young people like you. And we'd love for you to be the creative genius behind it. And so now we're doing a bigger version of that. We're gonna follow up even a year later to see what kind of change might have happened and and incentivize them to engage their friends in the content to see if we can kind of, I guess, reverse, you know, what we're already seeing there on social media in terms of promoting tanning, but kind of going the other way.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Yeah, I think that's fascinating because you're kind of fighting fire with fire, for lack of a better descriptor, right? And going out to the very people that have been promoting it, but showing them, hey, this maybe isn't the best, you know, decision for your health. And then having them turn that message around and seeing the impact. I'm really excited to see where the larger scale study goes because I could see this flourishing, especially across college campuses or really making a difference, you know, for young people out there and even for adults that maybe have been reluctant, but really still pay attention to social media messaging. Because I think you're definitely right. That's where we've got to go if we want the message to get out. And and the why that you brought to the table, I think is so important.

Thanks And Closing

SPEAKER_00 26:10

I want to thank you, Sherry. This has been a great conversation to really just talk about the psychology behind this and for dedicating your career to figuring this out. I mean, you're gonna help us, especially, you know, as dermatologists, dermatology providers out there that are trying to win this battle in the short time frame we have with patients. It's a challenge and us trying to figure out the best way to go about it. And you're doing the legwork to figure out some tactics that hopefully will make us successful one day at really sort of ending the love affair that we see with tanning in general. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Of course. Lovely to have you on and would love to have you back, especially as we find out more information uh with your study as well. And stay tuned for the next episode of Dermatrotter Don't Swear About Skin Care.