Death warnings provoke smokers to puff more

Advising against the use of death warnings on cigarette packs, an international team of scientists has claimed that these anti-smoking messages actually provoke the smokers to puff more as a way to cope with the inevitability of death.

According to the study by psychologists from the United States, Switzerland and Germany, "In general, when smokers are faced with death-related anti-smoking messages on cigarette packs, they produce active coping attempts as reflected in their willingness to continue the risky smoking behavior".

They found that warnings unrelated to death, such as "smoking makes you unattractive" or "smoking brings you and the people around you severe damage," were more effective in changing smokers' attitudes toward their habit, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reported.

"On the one hand, death-related warnings were not effective and even ironically caused more positive smoking attitudes among smokers who based their self-esteem on smoking," the researchers said.

They said, "On the other hand, warning messages that were unrelated to death effectively reduced smoking attitudes the more recipients based their self-esteem on smoking."

In the study, the participants, aged between 17 and 41, filled in a questionnaire to determine how much their smoking was based on self-esteem and were shown cigarette packs with different warnings on them.