Sensation seeking and dosage effect: An exploration of the role of surprise in anti-cocaine messages

This article examines emotional and cognitive responses to graphic illustrations of the effects of cocaine among a sample of low and high sensation seekers (LSS & HSS). Two-hundred-and-five (n = 205) undergraduate students at a large northern university in the United Kingdom participated in the study and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: low-image or high-image print adverts about the consequences of cocaine use. Results indicated that although high sensation seekers report greater cocaine use as compared with low sensation seekers, report less surprise and have less dominant cognitions than LSS, they do not differ from LSS in terms of other affective responses when exposed to anti-cocaine visual messages. However, the high-image advert was more successful than the low-image adverts in eliciting surprise, which has important theoretical and empirical implications for the design of effective messages targeting HSS.</.