When Does Self-Affirmation Reduce Negative Responses to Antismoking Messages?

Abstract

Previous research has shown that self-affirmation can reduce individuals’ defensive processing of threatening health messages. In this study, we examine two audience characteristics—smoking experience and trait reactance—that might regulate the effects of self-affirmation on negative message responses within the context of college smoking. Results of a controlled experiment indicate that self-affirmation worked to reduce negative message responses among smokers who were low in trait reactance. For smokers high in trait reactance and nonsmokers, the effect of self-affirmation was either unclear or went in a direction that led to even greater defensive processing.

Keywords:

• Defensive Processing
• Health Communication
• Persuasion
• Self-Affirmation
• Smoking

Notes

Note. Standardized regression coefficients are reported.

Note. Standardized regression coefficients are reported.

A. J. Dillard et al. (2005) used two self-affirmation manipulations. In one of them, participants were presented with a self-affirming sentence before exposure to a cigarette warning label (e.g., “You are an honest person”) and instructed to think about a time when they felt this way and to write it down. In the other manipulation, a self-affirming sentence (e.g., “You are an honest person”) appeared directly on the cigarette warning label and no writing task was required. In both manipulations, participants were provided with a single value to reflect on. The lack of choice might have made the manipulations less effective because participants might not necessarily have affirmed a value that was important to them personally. Also, the lack of a writing task in the second manipulation might have made the self-affirmation process much less involving than typical inductions, where writing tasks are an important component.

Using the total number of thoughts generated as a proxy measure of message scrutiny, we analyzed the effects of smoking experience and self-affirmation on the number of thoughts. By observing the means, we found that self-affirmed nonsmokers indeed generated the largest number of thoughts (M = 4.16) compared to the other groups (self-affirmed smokers: M = 3.68; nonaffirmed nonsmokers: M = 3.54; nonaffirmed smokers: M = 3.62). A planned contrast revealed that self-affirmed nonsmokers as a group indeed generated significantly more thoughts than the other groups combined, t = 2.459, df = 409, p = .014.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiaoli Nan

Xiaoli Nan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland.

Xiaoquan Zhao

Xiaoquan Zhao is an Assistant Professor at George Mason University.