PROJECT TITLE: Project # 2: Smoking Cues in Anti-tobacco PSAsPRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS: Caryn Lerman, Ph.D., Joseph N. Cappella, Ph.D.KEY PERSONNEL: Lerman (15%), Cappella (10%), Andrew Strasser, Ph.D. (15%), E. Paul Wileyto, Ph.D.(10%), Chris Jepson (5%).PROJECT SUMMARY: Tobacco use is the greatest preventable cause of death worldwide yet about 1 in 5adults in the U.S. continue to smoke. Message campaigns, such as public service announcements (PSAs),designed to increase the awareness of the health harms of tobacco use, have shown initial promising findings.This has led to exploration of the features of anti-tobacco PSAs that are most and least persuasive, includingtypes of appeals and PSA components or features. Anti-smoking mass media campaigns often presentsmoking-related cues (e.g., seeing someone smoke) to illustrate the negative consequences of smoking).However, these smoking-related 'cues' can elicit strong smoking urges, providing a key motivation forcontinued smoking in the face of a desire to quit. Our preliminary research shows that when chronic smokersview anti-smoking PSAs that include smoking cues, their urges to smoke increase significantly - if the centralargument of the PSA is weak. To extend this research, we propose to study the effects of smoking cues inanti-tobacco PSAs on smoking urges, message processing, persuasion, and smoking behavior in a sample of300 chronic smoking adults. This laboratory-based study will use a 3 (smoking cue: no cue/peripheralcue/central cue) x 2 (low/high argument strength) factorial (between-subject) design. PSAs in differentconditions will be balanced for multiple explicit and implicit ad features. The primary outcomes are: 1) smokingurges, 2) message processing (recall, perceived ad effectiveness), and 3) persuasion (attitudes, self-efficacy,intentions). In addition, participants will be monitored for physiological arousal (heart rate, skin conductance)elicited during cue presentation. Following the session, we will permit participants to smoke in the smokingresearch laboratory and assess latency and consumption, thus serving as a behavioral measure of PSAsmoking cue effects. Results from this study may importantly provide empirical support for better developmentof anti-smoking PSAs, and to support restrictions on tobacco industry adver
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