How Neuroticism Affects Responses to Anti-Smoking Messages

Abstract

The effect of trait neuroticism on college students' (n = 200) responses to anti-smoking public service announcements (PSAs) was examined using a 2 (neuroticism: high vs. low) × 3 (message type: personal testimony, secondhand smoke, and informative) × 3 (message: nested within message type) design. We hypothesized that those high in neuroticism would be avoidant toward anti-smoking messages, have quicker and stronger negative reactions and perceive the messages as more biased and less involving. As hypothesized, those high in neuroticism were more likely to want to avoid thinking about smoking as a function of viewing the messages and more likely to see messages as biased; however, neuroticism did not affect judgments of message involvement. Tobacco use and gender also affected message bias and avoidance. Those scoring high in neuroticism also responded quicker to negative emotion assessments to messages. Implications for the importance of neuroticism in message design and message processing research are discussed.

Notes

¹Research concerning neuroticism can be divided into two areas: (1) tests of clinical populations and (2) tests of nonclinical populations. Since neuroticism is considered to be a dimension of normal personality rather than a personality disorder, it is represented by a normal distribution. The extreme ends of this distribution (i.e., greater than two standard deviations from the mean) are considered abnormal. Yet the majority of personality research outside of the clinical psychology setting is based on the normal distribution of neuroticism. Thus, “high” and “low” scores on neuroticism in these texts refer to those scores within the normal limits (i.e., within the normal distribution).

²Given that the dependent variable (emotion) and the independent variable were both dichotomized, these data also were examined in a series of χ² analyses. These analyses confirmed the findings of the repeated measures analyses that those high in neuroticism responded “no” more often to each emotion then did those low in neuroticism.

³Prior work suggests that women score higher in neuroticism than males (Costa, Terracciano, & McRae, 2001). Consistent with prior work, gender and neuroticism were related, t(198) = 3.36, p < .001, such that females (M = 2.64, SD = 1.91) scored higher on neuroticism than did males (M = 1.75, SD = 1.80). However, gender did not interact with neuroticism for any of the analyses. Prior work also suggests neurotics are more likely to be smokers. A 3 (smoking status: nonsmoker vs. experimenter vs. smoker) × 2 (neuroticism: high vs. low) chi-squared test was used to examine this relationship; it was not significant, χ² (2) = 1.85, ns. We also examined the dependent variables to assess whether smoking status and neuroticism interacted to affect the outcomes; no significant interaction effects were obtained.