Finding kairos in quitting smoking: Smokers' perceptions of warning pictures

Abstract

This paper studies Kairos, i.e. the opportune moment to persuade, through a smoking cessation experiment. We approached 101 people, comprising of 81 smokers and 20 non-smokers, on the streets of Palo Alto, California. The participants were shown five warning pictures related to the dangers of smoking as well as a control picture. The people rated each picture based upon how strongly they felt they were affected by the pictures. The results indicate that the opportune moment to show these pictures is not when the people already are smoking but rather much earlier. Quite interestingly, the affect of this intervention was stronger on women than men. The fact that the opportune moment seems to vary between individuals complicates the design of applications leveraging Kairos to a great extent. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.