Alcohol pictorial health warning labels: the impact of self-affirmation and health warning severity.

These findings call into question the validity of the self-affirmation manipulation, which is purported to reduce defensive reactions to threatening warnings. We discuss possible explanations for this null effect, including the impact of participants' low perceived susceptibility to the risks shown on these pictorial health warning labels. Our finding that highly-severe health warnings increase avoidance and reactance but are also perceived as being more effective and more likely to motivate people to drink less will inform future health warning design and have implications for health warning label theory.