Coping with stigmatization: Smokers' reactions to antismoking campaigns

Smoker identity and resistance to antismoking campaigns: The role of group entitativity

“…Tobacco control policies, either banning smokers from public places (e.g., bars, restaurants, workplaces) or increasing the price of tobacco, have contributed to creating and perpetuating social rejection of smokers (Burgess, Fu, & van Ryn, 2009). Similarly, antismoking campaigns have also exacerbated such a stigmatization (Riley, Ulrich, Hamann, & Ostroff, 2017; Thompson, Barnett, & Pearce, 2009), notably by making negative features of smokers’ identity more salient (Falomir-Pichastor, Chatard, Mugny, & Quiamzade, 2009; Falomir-Pichastor & Mugny, 2004), by devaluing and casting doubts on the appropriateness of their group-defining behaviours (e.g., by asserting, as an imperative, that smoking is harmful) and by vividly depicting them as slaves of tobacco, lacking of individual autonomy and self-control capacities, as well as unstable, anxious, and immature persons (Echabe, Guede, & Castro, 1994; Tombor et al, 2015). Moreover, because these campaigns activate the antismoking norm (Rhodes, Roskos-Ewoldsen, Edison, & Bradford, 2008), they inevitably put smokers in a position of social deviance by reminding them what are the appropriate behaviours in society, and that theirs is not.…”