Knowledge of the metaphors on which smokers rely and the rationalisations these support informed new message strategies, the most effective of which focused on affect rather than cognitions. Specifically, framing smoking not as an assertion of women's choices, but as a behaviour that deprives children of the freedom to make choices, offers a new approach to promoting cessation to pregnant women.
In line with conceptual and empirical studies foregrounding the primacy of affective responses, messages that aroused strong self-referent emotions created dissonance less amenable to counter-argument. Generating affective, rather than cognitive, dissonance appears to have a stronger cut-through than informational or didactic messages. Our findings have two key implications. First, they suggest policymakers could diversify their current approaches to behaviour change, which assume a rational decision-making process in which few consumers engage. Second, our results offer social marketers a potentially more effective new approach to designing interventions for this high priority population group. Specifically, we suggest there is potential value in testing the most effective messages in targeted communications that reach women when they are in healthcare settings where cessation support is available.