Exploring Implicit and Explicit Affective Responses to Graphic Health Warnings on Cigarette Packages in Colombia

Graphic health warnings (GHWs) are regarded a highly cost-effective public policy to communicate the health risks involved in smoking, mainly when they trigger negative emotional reactions. GHWs promote intentions to quit among smokers and prevent smoking initiation among non-smokers. In three experiments, we study how smokers and nonsmokers differ in implicit and explicit measures of emotional reactions towards GHWs. Experiment 1 used the Self-Assessment Manikin to measure explicit emotional (arousal and valence) ratings for six warnings published in tobacco products. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1 but smokers and nonsmokers rated a new set of 36 GHWs not yet published. Experiment 3 used an implicit task, the Affect Misattribution Procedure, to evaluate and compare the affective responses to GHWs provided by smokers and non-smokers. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that smokers explicitly reported weaker negative emotional reactions to both familiar and unfamiliar GHWs compared to nonsmokers. Experiment 3 showed similar levels of negative implicit emotional responses among smokers and nonsmokers. Our data suggest that the decreased affective response involves high-order cognitive elaboration and evaluations of the messages conveyed by GHW, while early negative emotions triggered by the graphic component of the warnings similarly affect smokers and non-smokers. We propose that implicit measures may serve as additional and inexpensive tools for dissociating explicit biased affective responses of smokers towards GHWs from automatic emotional responses. In particular, the affect misattribution procedure may help to design warnings that communicate the risks of smoking but prevent adverse outcomes such as cognitive dissonance.