Assessing Reactance to Culturally Tailored Anti-Smoking Messages in Sexual and Gender Minority Young Adults

High smoking rates among sexual and gender minority (SGM) people call for anti-smoking campaigns for the population. Although cultural tailoring is an effective strategy, SGM-tailored health messages may lead to unintended effects such as psychological reactance. This study investigates whether different SGM gender groups experience reactance to tailored anti-smoking messages using different gender expressions. We conducted a between-subjects experiment in 1190 SGM young adults (18-30 years) with four conditions (transgender/nonbinary expression versus feminine expression versus masculine expression versus multiple gender expressions). We found that SGM-tailored messages elicited low levels of perceived threat to freedom, anger, negative thoughts, and counterarguing. In most cases, these outcomes were not different between conditions across gender groups. Our findings suggest that it is possible to design culturally tailored messages that elicit low reactance among SGM individuals regardless of gender identity. Additionally, using multiple gender expressions in cultural tailoring appears to be a promising approach to mitigating reactance.