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No sign of quitting: incidental exposure to “no smoking” signs ironically boosts cigarette‐approach tendencies in smokers
Author(s) -
Earp Brian D.,
Dill Brendan,
Harris Jennifer L.,
Ackerman Joshua M.,
Bargh John A.
Publication year - 2013
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/jasp.12202
Subject(s) - psychology , unconscious mind , priming (agriculture) , context (archaeology) , sign (mathematics) , meaning (existential) , action (physics) , social psychology , negation , subliminal stimuli , public health , developmental psychology , medicine , linguistics , psychotherapist , psychoanalysis , paleontology , mathematical analysis , philosophy , botany , germination , mathematics , physics , quantum mechanics , biology , nursing
Abstract The unconscious mind tends to disregard negations in its processing of semantic meaning. Therefore, messages containing negated concepts can ironically prime mental representations and evaluations that are opposite to those intended. We hypothesized that the subtle presentation of a negated concept (e.g., “no smoking”) would activate ironic motivational orientations as well. We tested this hypothesis in a public health context. Smokers viewed photographs in which “no smoking” signs were either inconspicuously embedded (prime condition) or edited out (control condition). Primed smokers showed amplified automatic approach tendencies toward smoking‐related stimuli, but not toward smoking‐unrelated stimuli: an ironic motivational response to exposure to the signs. Since passive priming effects generally serve to facilitate forms of action, not inhibit them, antismoking and other public health campaigns may ironically increase the very behaviors they seek to reduce.