Early implicit effects of self-affirmation in attending to graphic anti-smoking

Abstract

Background: Threatening health information can induce counter-productive defensive responses. Self-affirmation can reduce this defensiveness to health-risk information. In the current eye-movement study we measured whether self-affirmation causes more attention allocation (i.e., more fixations) to threatening anti-smoking information among those for whom the information is self-relevant. Methods: After being randomized to a self-affirmation manipulation, 47 smokers and 52 non-smokers were exposed to a series of cigarette packs containing either high threat or low threat smoking-related images. Findings: A significant three-way interaction was found among smoking status, affirmation condition and image. Self-affirmed smokers made more fixations to the cigarette packs displaying high threat and low threat images than did non-affirmed smokers. Self-affirmed non-smokers showed less fixations to the high threat and low threat images than did non-affirmed non-smokers. Discussion: The findings indicate positive attention effects of self-affirmation on early attention allocation processes among those for whom the information is self-relevant (i.e., smokers). The use of this implicit measure of performance in the form of eye movements contributes novel data to inform our understanding of the working mechanisms of self- affirmation.