Targeting three United States priority populations with educational nicotine messages using curiosity-eliciting strategies

There are widespread misperceptions about nicotine, its use, and its consequences. Nicotine false beliefs are associated with reduced smoking cessation success and a lower likelihood of using less harmful nicotine products. Three priority populations: African Americans, rural adults, and young adult smokers in the United States tend to hold more nicotine false beliefs relative to other groups and are at risk for poor smoking cessation outcomes. The present study used an optimization phase to test the effectiveness of curiosity-inducing message components (social signals, questions, ratings) in a 23 factorial design to identify the curiosity-eliciting components with the greatest likelihood of reducing nicotine false beliefs in each priority population (n=200 for each population). Following message optimization, we compared exposure to targeted messages (from the optimization phase) with exposure to no nicotine messages and standard nicotine messages in new samples (n=200 for each priority population). Results indicate that targeted messages significantly reduced nicotine false beliefs (and other relevant outcomes) in Black/African American smokers and rural adult smokers. In young adults, targeted messages significantly reduced nicotine false beliefs compared to no control messages but did not show additional benefit beyond standard nicotine messages. Overall, findings highlight the benefit of curiosity-eliciting strategies in messages designed to reduce nicotine false beliefs and the utility of an optimization phase to identify message components with the highest likelihood of success.