À suivre Festinger (1957), les individus ont tendance à rechercher des informations consistantes avec leurs cognitions et éviter les informations inconsistantes. Cette recherche a pour objectif de tester l’hypothèse d’exposition sélective à l’information de prévention du tabagisme en utilisant une mesure implicite de l’attitude en complément des mesures traditionnellement utilisées. Quarante-quatre fumeurs et 80 non-fumeurs, agents ou stagiaires d’un institut de formation ont pris part à cette étude. Les participants étaient sollicités sous prétexte de participer à la conception d’une formation sur les conduites addictives. Ils devaient se prononcer sur l’importance à accorder à six addictions parmi lesquelles le tabagisme. Un phénomène d’exposition sélective au regard du comportement tabagique a été mis en évidence. De plus, l’attitude implicite envers le tabac est prédictive des scores d’exposition à l’information pour les fumeurs. Ces résultats soutiennent l’hypothèse d’un effet de l’attitude lors de l’expression des besoins dans le cadre de conception de formation en prévention du tabagisme.

Many studies deal with the impact of prevention campaigns. Whatever the method used, most of them postulate that people take the campaign into consideration as soon as they are exposed to it. The cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957, 1964) postulates the principle of selective exposure. People tend to both expose themselves to consistent information to strengthen their attitude and behavior and avoid inconsistent one. Avoiding inconsistent information prevents them from threatening position which could modify their attitude. The goal of this research consists in verifying a selective exposure effect concerning smoking prevention using a measure of implicit attitude. This research was conducted in a professional training institute. Participants were recruited on the pretext of a consultation as part of a training design on addictions. They were either employees or trainees from the institute. Forty-four smokers and 80 non-smokers took part in the experiment. They had to precise which prevention thematic (among six addictions) would interest them in order to construct a new training/formation program dealing with dangers of addiction the harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, drugs etc. People were asked what kind of topic would interest them most. Then, their attitudes and behavior toward smoking were evaluated. To evaluate smoking attitudes, we used both an explicit (Attitude Toward Smoking Scale [ATS]; Etter et al., 2000) and an implicit measure (Single Category Implicit Association Test Personalized [SC-IAT-P]; Bardin et al., 2014). Smoking habits were also recorded. Results revealed that smokers have an implicit attitude less negative than non-smokers. Implicit attitude of smokers also predicts selective exposure. The more their attitude is positive, the less people would like to expose themselves to smoking prevention information. At last, smokers who have already considered quitting are more inclined to expose to such information than other smokers. These results support the hypothesis of an effect on attitudes explicit and implicit in the expression of needs in the context of smoking prevention training design.