Marijuana useisassociatedwith negative cognitive and health outcomes and riskydriving. Giventhe rapidly changing policies regarding legalrecreational and medicinal marijuana use, it is important to examine what types of marijuana prevention messages may be effective in minimizing such outcomes. This study examined cognitive andaffective responses to anti-marijuana public health messagesin as ample of adult marijuana users and nonusers to determine the correlates of perceivedm essage effectiveness. Method: Participants (N = 203; mean age =3 7.7 years) were adult marijuana users and nonusers recruited via AmazonMechanicalTurk (August2017).After completing self-reportm easures of marijuana use, theyv ieweds ix anti-marijuana messages presentedinarandom order,addressing marijuana'seffects in each of three topic areas: cognitive performance, driving, and adverse health outcomes (e.g., twomessages per topic). Participants completed assessments of cognitive and affective perceptions after viewing each message. Foreach message topic, alinear regression model wasused to determine which cognitive and affective perceptions were most predictive of perceivedmessageeffectiveness. Results: Forall messagetopics, nonusers perceivedt he messages as more effective than did users (p < .001). In the majority of analyses, greater message effectivenessw as associated with increased perceivedh armo fm arijuana and increased liking of the message. Fordriving and health messages, greater message effectiveness wasalso significantlycorrelated with lowerpleasantaffect. Conclusions: Thefi ndings suggest that audience perceptions mayb e uniquelyp redictive of message effectiveness, depending on the topic.
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