Knowledge Bank

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control of Act of 2009 (called the Tobacco Act or the Act from hereon) mandated that the U.S. adopt graphic cigarette warning labels similar to those used by European and Latin American countries to control the prevalence of smoking. Tobacco companies successfully litigated FDA’s selection of graphic warning labels based on this section of the Act on the grounds that the labels were picked based solely on emotionality and, thus, were unconstitutional. Prior research has shown that emotionally charged warnings may help to reduce smoking’s prevalence by improving a smoker’s memory for the long term health effects of smoking and causing smokers to perceive smoking as a high risk, low reward activity. We conducted a between subjects design in order to test whether the level of graphicness used in a warning label influenced either warning credibility or long term memory. We found that highly graphic images do not significantly improve long term recognition memory compared to text-only warning or less graphic images. However, graphic images did improve credibility of the warnings relative to a text-only condition. This could indicate that highly graphic warning labels are no more effective than low graphic warning labels at conveying the dangers of smoking, but that they make the warning more credible.