Exposure to Secondhand Smoke Anti-Tobacco Messages and Cognitive and Emotional Responses: Role of Smoking Status

• In Event: HIGH-DENSITY: Emotion, Cognition, and Health: Automatic and Controlled Processes

Abstract

At a laboratory session, participants (N = 48 adult, nicotine-dependent smokers and N = 51, adult, non-smokers) were tested for cognitive and emotional processing using psychophysiological measures (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance, and facial electromyography) and recognition memory of six secondhand smoke anti-tobacco advertisements depicting either both smoking cues and threat content, or neither. Self-report negative emotion, arousal, and counterarguments were measured following exposure to each message. The results from this study indicated that the presence of smoking cues and threat content in the same message resulted in defensive processing by smokers indicated by increased counterarguing and arousal, less heart rate deceleration over time, and less recognition accuracy and sensitivity of message content compared to non-smokers. These data suggest that the smoking status of the message viewer influences whether a secondhand anti-tobacco message containing smoking cues and threat content is received or rejected.

Authors

• Russell Brent Clayton, Florida State U

• Justin Robert Keene, Texas Tech U

• Glenn M. Leshner, University of Oklahoma

• Annie Lang, Indiana U

• Andy Ellis, Florida State U

• Joshua Hendrickse, Florida State U

• Rachel Secharan, Florida State U

• Madison Wilde, Florida State U