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Construction of Smoking‐Relevant Risk Perceptions Among College Students: The Influence of Need for Cognition and Message Content 1
Author(s) -
Vidrine Jennifer Irvin,
Simmons Vani Nath,
Brandon Thomas H.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.0021-9029.2007.00149.x
Subject(s) - psychology , cognition , perception , elaboration likelihood model , risk perception , health risk , need for cognition , preference , intervention (counseling) , social psychology , attitude change , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , persuasion , medicine , psychiatry , environmental health , neuroscience , economics , microeconomics
Changing smokers' health‐risk perceptions has been difficult. This study tested whether need for cognition (NC)—a factor within Petty & Cacioppo's (1986) elaboration likelihood model that reflects the preference for effortful cognitive information processing—moderated responses to a smoking risk message intervention. College smokers ( n =227) evaluated a fact‐based or emotion‐based smoking risk pamphlet or a control pamphlet. Among occasional but not daily smokers, NC interacted as hypothesized with type of message to moderate risk perceptions. Among participants with higher NC, the fact‐based message produced the greatest increase in risk perception; whereas among participants with lower NC, the emotion‐based message produced the greatest change. Findings demonstrate that individual differences in cognitive processing can influence the potency of health‐risk messages.