Smoking and rebelliousness: A longitudinal study from childhood to maturity.

The hypothesis that rebelliousness contributes to the etiology of cigarette smoking was tested with data from 2 longitudinal studies. Comparisons were made between smokers and nonsmokers (as determined at age 30) in the presmoking years from kindergarten through high school on several measures of rebelliousness. In every comparison for both sexes the smokers showed greater rebelliousness; the difference was statistically significant in most instances. This difference persisted into adulthood; smokers of both sexes scored significantly lower on the Socialization scale of the CPI. In discussing factors associated with the initiation and continuance of smoking, the evidence indicating rebelliousness as related also to alcoholism and drug usage suggests that it would be heuristic to regard smoking as 1 of the addictions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The interest value and relevance of fear arousing communications.

"The two experiments reported here were designed to show that a strong fear appeal could be more convincing than a weak one when (a) the communication is low in interest value and the dramatic nature of the 'strong' communication makes it considerably more interesting than the 'weak' communication, and (b) the communication is of low relevance to the actions of the audience… . There was little opinion change with the relatively uninteresting minimal fear lecture, while the degree of opinion change produced by the more interesting strong fear lecture was inversely related to the relevance of the material to the Ss." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)