The Role of Motivational and Persuasive Message Factors in Changing Implicit Attitudes Toward Smoking

Abstract

The current work examined the extent to which nicotine level affects the receptiveness of cigarette smokers to a compelling (strong) or a specious (weak) antismoking, public service announcement (PSA). The combination of nicotine loading (i.e., having just smoked a cigarette) and a strong antismoking PSA led to significantly more negative implicit evaluations of cigarettes; however, explicit evaluations were not changed by nicotine level or PSA quality. Smokers’ implicit evaluations of cigarettes were affected only by compelling PSAs when they had recently smoked but not when they were nicotine deprived or when they viewed weak PSAs. Because implicit evaluations of cigarettes predict deliberate smoking-related decisions, it is important to understand which factors can render these implicit evaluations relatively more negative.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Support for this research was provided by grant DA013555 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to Steven J. Sherman.

Notes

¹The implicit and explicit attitude measures were unrelated in this experiment (r = − .10, p = .53).