ObjectiveThe use of pictorial warning labels on cigarette packages is one of the provisions included in the first ever global health treaty by the World Health Organization against the tobacco epidemic. There is substantial evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of graphic health warning labels on intention to quit, thoughts about health risks and engaging in cessation behaviors. However, studies that address the implicit emotional drives evoked by such warnings are still underexplored. Here, we provide experimental data for the use of pictorial health warnings as a reliable strategy for tobacco control.MethodsExperiment 1 pre-tested nineteen prototypes of pictorial warnings to screen for their emotional impact. Participants (n = 338) were young adults balanced in gender, smoking status and education. Experiment 2 (n = 63) tested pictorial warnings (ten) that were stamped on packs. We employed an innovative set-up to investigate the impact of the warnings on the ordinary attitude of packs’ manipulation, and quantified judgments of warnings’ emotional strength and efficacy against smoking.FindingsExperiment 1 revealed that women judged the warning prototypes as more aversive than men, and smokers judged them more aversive than non-smokers. Participants with lower education judged the prototypes more aversive than participants with higher education. Experiment 2 showed that stamped warnings antagonized the appeal of the brands by imposing a cost to manipulate the cigarette packs, especially for smokers. Additionally, participants’ judgments revealed that the more aversive a warning, the more it is perceived as effective against smoking.ConclusionsHealth warning labels are one of the key components of the integrated approach to control the global tobacco epidemic. The evidence presented in this study adds to the understanding of how implicit responses to pictorial warnings may contribute to behavioral change.

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This automatic reaction under extreme life threatening stress, although adaptive for defense, may have pathological consequences as implied by its association with PTSD symptoms.

Manual reaction times (MRTs) are reduced when a warning signal precedes the onset of an imperative stimulus. The decrease in MRTs is modulated by uncertainty about the moment of stimulus occurrence after the warning stimulus. This modulation is related to preparatory mechanisms that occur during the foreperiod between the warning and imperative stimuli. Hence, manipulations within the range of foreperiods influence preparation and thus response latencies. When the moment of the occurrence of the imperative stimulus is highly predictable, volunteers can allocate resources in time to optimize their performance, a mechanism known as the temporal allocation of attention. In the present study, we evaluated the effects of temporal context (i.e., the duration and arrangement of intervals) on MRTs by conducting 2 experiments with different purposes. The first experiment verified which intervals were more susceptible to variations in the temporal context. The second experiment examined whether learning (i.e., practice) that is acquired by volunteers while in a temporal context affects performance if the temporal contexts are changed. Our data showed that short intervals were more susceptible to contextual influences. Participants could implicitly perceive the temporal context of the experiment and used this to optimize performance. Implicit learning obtained during a temporal context influenced response latencies for a period of time, even when the temporal context was changed. Our results complement many aspects of the results reported by other studies and confirm the importance of temporal attention for organizing and optimizing perception and behavioral performance.