Construction of Smoking‐Relevant Risk Perceptions Among College Students: The Influence of Need for Cognition and Message Content¹

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.